


What if...?

by Asharen



Category: GreedFall (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, Explicit Language, F/M, Idiots in Love, Mutual Pining, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-01-15 23:30:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 62,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21261419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asharen/pseuds/Asharen
Summary: The course of true love never did run smooth, not even for a prodigal Legate that should be able to navigate something as simple as her own feelings.A string of one-shots that capture the progress of De Sardet and Kurt's often confusing and temultuous relationship.





	1. Chapter 1

The salt and sweat that soaked her face stung like an absolute bitch when she swiped it into the cut on her forehead with the back of her wrist. She really had to remember to take off her overcoat between this fight and the next, lest she ruin the fine fabric further with this exercise in frustration.

The coin guard that stood across from her in their imaginary arena was a young thing, even by Ciel’s standards, and as green as the fresh spring grass. In all fairness to him, he _was_ the only recruit thus far that had managed to even land a hit on her, though it had not come without a blood price. His temple was already black and swollen and the split in the middle of his lip looked equally puffy and vile.

It was hard to bite back the smirk that threatened at the corner of her mouth as she watched him pant, struggling to remain wholly upright. She had been more than happy to let him run himself ragged around the ring as she took up a defensive position, parrying his blows. Her stance flowed into an offensive posture and the recruit blanched, bringing the longsword in front of his body up as though he hoped to stop her. It would do him no good, in the long run, for he was far too green and she had been trained by the very best.

The midday sun, becoming increasingly difficult to ignore as it clawed its way across the sky, glinted off the guard’s metal helmet. Ciel’s footfalls were sure as she led him in a tight circle, filled with glee at her wicked idea until she stood in the space he had just occupied, squinting in the light.

It would have been the perfect time for him to charge but he was too busy being cautious to think of it, waiting for her to make a move. Foolish, really for fortune favoured the bold. Or, in this case, the crafty. Bringing up the flat of her blade so that the sun caught its edge, Ciel angled the metal so that it might caress his jaw, his cheek. His eyes, when he caught her intent, widened at the worst possible moment.

There was no honour in her underhanded tactics but she found, since the late coup, that she didn’t rightly care.

He swiped at his eyes and she grinned, heady with adrenaline as she charged him. She raised her arm, feinting a blow to the unprotected side of his head. Yelping, he pulled his blade high to defend his yet unblemished temple only for her to duck and tuck her way around the side of his body, putting all of her weight into a blow to the back of his knee.

It wasn’t her cleanest shot, she was tiring fast now, but it did the trick. The recruit buckled with a groan and Ciel slid the edge of her blade along his neck, resting it on the corded edge of his collar. The scrape of metal on material was a victory chorus in her ears.

“Do you yield?” She asked, her own chest heaving a little now.

The recruit said nothing but nodded curtly, keeping his back to her. He was a proud one then, probably none too happy about being trounced by a noble and some dirty tactics. Not that the Coin Guard were any strangers to those.

Ciel pulled her sword back and let him climb to his feet, noticing that he strongly favoured the one she hadn’t whacked. That was going to smart for a few days. The recruit waved away an offer of help and limped out of the yard without so much as looking at anyone else. His ego would smart much longer than that.

The Captain yelled, waving in the next volunteer.

How many recruits had it been now? She could barely remember; they were all a blur of regiment colours, of steel helmets, and blunted blades. Surely it must be the seventh or eighth…maybe?

Beating up new recruits wasn’t exactly what she had in mind when she had sought to commandeer the Coin Guard’s practice yards that morning. Ciel had merely wanted some privacy to tear through drills, and maybe a handful of dummies, until she was so sore and numb that she couldn’t see straight, never mind hope to walk straight.

Perhaps then she would be able to sleep without the plague that was her nightmares.

But Sieglinde, apparently not one to waste any opportunity to better her recruits, had offered Ciel use of the yard so long as she helped with the newest intake – with blunted blades of course. It would not do to risk injury to what few men the Coin Guard had left to them.

It had been too tempting an offer for Ciel to refuse in the end. If Sieglinde had any inclinations as to the root of Ciel’s frustrations she might not have so readily offered the Legate the chance to tan her recruits’ hides.

A young man took up his place across from her, his arms loose at his sides. It seemed he favoured the rapier, an odd choice in a guard perhaps, but not usually a bad one. In this case, it was definitely a bad choice. He wasn’t holding it well, awkward in his long limbs and his too loose stance. A large boy, broad in shoulder and muscle – muscles borne of hard labour rather than battle.

A farmer’s boy, perhaps, trying to escape a life trapped behind the plough?

Ciel couldn’t help but narrow her eyes at him, wondering if he was really just that green or he was somehow more artful than the others.

If he knew how to use it, he would be quicker than the others, relying on finesse and deftness of foot rather than reach or strength. In normal circumstances, she too favoured the rapier but the idea of poking at recruits with a capped needle did not placate the boiling in her blood. The arming sword in her grip was heavier but had better reach. Even blunt, it would leave a nasty bruise.

The boy looked at her from under the brim of his helmet, waiting as his fingers absently worried the leather grip of his blade. If she had been paying attention, she might have noticed the murmuring from the side lines. As it was, her head was filled with a roaring buzz.

Finally, when his patience snapped, he rushed her with a guttural yell that reverberated in her chest somewhere.

It was embarrassing how quickly it was over, really, and more than a little disappointing. He would definitely be on the receiving end of some ribbing later from the others.

The recruit lunged at her, knowing at least that much about the weapon, but it seemed that might be all he knew. His footwork was far from good, containing none of the lightness or quickness of step she had seen from Vasco, and he put too much weight behind his blade. Ciel easily batted it aside, content to let it skim along her sleeve.

A quick kick to his ankle sent him flailing off somewhere behind her.

She turned and saw the next strike he aimed at her cheek. Ducking deftly underneath the blade that now whizzed over her head, she switched her own blade to her left hand and drove her fist into the underside of his jaw.

His head _snapped_ upwards.

Dazed, he fell back, his arms falling wide as he staggered. Ciel spun towards his sword arm, swapping her own once more, and grabbed at his forearm with a hand. Driving the pommel into his wrist, she pulled her elbow back with a snap before driving it into his temple. The boy grunted as his hand fell open of its own accord, the sword falling to the dirt at their feet.

He looked down at her with an equally dazed expression and Ciel drove her forehead into his chin before he came to his senses. She felt his teeth scrape her forehead but she didn’t care, assured in her victory as she pushed lightly at his chest plate. The coin guard, stunned and most definitely bruised, fell on his back in the dirt.

Planting her foot squarely on his chest, she tucked the end of her blade under his chin.

“Do you yield?”

If he’d had any sense about him, he would have grabbed her ankle and twisted, forcing her down to the dirt with him-where he would have had the advantage.

“I yield,” the boy rasped, staring up at the sun. Ciel tilted her head, considering him for a moment before she removed her boot from his person. He lay there for a long moment, panting and sweating and clutching delicately at his jaw. The dirty boot print she had left on his chest plate pleased her more than it should have.

Was he one of the soldiers that had been part of the coup? Or merely one that had been taken in after, in an attempt to bolster numbers? Should she care, even if he was somehow involved? They had put a stop to the Coin Guard’s conspiracy, saved the Governors, and cut the venomous head off of the traitorous snake. It was done.

So why did she still care so very much?

Ciel shook her head, moving aside to hang the arming sword back up in its rack.

Too inexperienced, her mind whispered. He would have been little more than fodder, just another body to throw at the nobility if they had the chance to fight back. A body to be sacrificed so that the Guard might stand a chance of survival if things went wrong.

The thought was a roiling ball of wrath in her stomach that made her fingers itch to take the blade up again.

“Good attempt, soldier,” the overseer said, pulling the recruit to his feet and slapping him heartily on the shoulder. Both of them pretended not to notice how the boy flinched at the contact. “Get that scrape covered and report to your lieutenant for duty. He’ll have some work for you.”

The Coin Guard must have been in dire straits to have such green recruits on active duty. Although, perhaps there was wisdom in the old adage of ‘learning on the job’. That’s what she was doing, was it not? Muddling her way through far more complicated missions of diplomacy than she had ever been trained for.

“Yes, Captain,” the boy said before turning to Ciel. His sallow pallor made the freckles on his cheeks stand out in sharp relief. “Thank you, Your excellency. This is a lesson I won’t soon forget.”

The cheeky grin and the oddly sincere sentiment he offered her soothed something in her heart and she softened minutely.

Running a cloth over her face, she said, “You would do better with a heavier weapon, soldier. I can see the appeal of the rapier but do not throw away that which you have gained from your life thus far just to _get away_. You’ll not live long otherwise.”

She ran a critical eye over his labourer’s build, pointedly raising an eyebrow.

There was a flush high on his cheeks as he bowed to her, “I’ll think on it, Your Excellency.”

Ciel watched him go with a bemused quirk of her brows before wiping off the rest of her face.

“Who is next, then?” Ciel asked the soldiers as she shrugged out of her merchant’s overcoat, throwing it haphazardly over the faceless form of a training dummy. When no one answered, she raised a brow and loosened the tie around her neck, tossing that aside too.

She was left in her linen shirt and cotton breeches, a sash of congregation blue slung low on her hips. Her leather gloves and boots seemed to almost shine in the impossibly hot midday sun, making her fingers slick. It was truly beating down upon the training yard now, and not even the stilted breeze blowing in from the docks was enough to keep the humidity of the island at bay.

Everyone was looking a little flushed and uncomfortable, and not all of it to do with the sun.

The guards left in the courtyard were murmuring amongst themselves, the words unintelligible as they shifted from foot to foot, trying not to look at each other or their Captain. They tried not to look at her too, as she paced in front of them. Ciel rolled her sleeves up to her elbow and picked up the dropped rapier.

“Come on, men! Which of you whelps wants to show the Legate what the Coin Guard is made of?” The female captain hollered with a smirk, crossing her arms over her chest as she leaned against the brickwork of the barracks.

Ciel almost flinched, her eyes shuttering closed as her heart stuttered in her chest. She knew all too well what the Coin Guard was made of. Traitors and usurpers all, without a shred of honour between them.

She ignored the little voice in the back of her head that maintained that they weren’t all like that.

The hushed whispers and mutterings continued but none of the recruits dared step forward. It almost made her laugh. When this little training exercise had begun, they had all been eager to show what they were made of, to prove they could beat one poncy little noble. It didn’t bother her but she had even noticed some of them discreetly swapping coin amongst themselves when their superior wasn’t looking. She had no idea if those bets were in her favour but she doubted it.

“Come now,” Ciel teased with a grin, raising her arms wide as though she _were_ some harmless, poncy, little dainty. “Surely one of you fine guards are brave enough to take up the challenge?”

It was then one of the recruits, in a feat of just terrible timing for the poor bastard, coughed.

Ciel slinked towards him, rapier tapping gently on her thigh as she went. When she stood before him, she pressed a fist to his chest plate, pushing at him, “Care to spar, soldier?”

It was barely noticeable but the recruits that stood to the sides and back of the man seemed to melt away from them, leaving their unfortunate comrade to be the focus of her singular attention.

“As you wish, Your Excellency,” the recruit agreed with a reluctant nod, managing to keep most of the strain out of his voice as he reached for the nasty looking hammer on his belt.

“Enough!” A familiar rough voice cut through Ciel’s next words like the sword he handled so well. It was gruff as ever, and just as displeased.

Ciel’s eyes fluttered closed for one frustrated second before she straightened her back and looked over her shoulder to find her trusty Master at Arms glaring at her as though she were the only person in that godforsaken training yard. His pale eyes, rendered no warmer by the glowing sun, had to be at least as hard as clean-cut diamond as they bored into hers.

“It seems you are off the hook, soldier,” she muttered to the recruit next to her, patting him on the chest. Turning fully towards Kurt, she offered him a smirk and an openhanded flourish that was almost a bow. Her gracile movements would have been more suited to instigating a duel between nobles than some scrapping by the barracks but she knew it would grate on him. “Captain, are you offering to step in and show these recruits how it is done?”

“Dismissed, soldiers! Leave us,” Kurt ordered the rest of the guard without so much as averting his gaze. Authority oozed from every pore of his being in a way that threatened to send molten heat trickling through her.

The young captain that had been overseeing the training opened her mouth as though she might argue with Kurt. The dark scowl he shot her way was warning enough, however, to send her scampering out with the rest of the recruits.

Silence descended in the yard, as though all the sound were sucked out with the closing of the door. Neither of them spoke for a long minute, the silence between them tense. It had been that way since the coup.

Ciel thought she might have a dent in her thigh from the insistent press of the rapier’s cross guard.

“What’s the matter? Worried that I’ll show you up in front of the rest of the guard?” Ciel knocked by him, going to put the rapier back on the rack.

She burned where they touched like an old wound rubbed raw.

“What are you doing, Green Blood?” Kurt demanded as he turned her around to face him. His grip on her arm was gentler than his voice, and far more so than she deserved.

Ciel met his gaze evenly with a placid smile and flicker of arched brow, “Until you so rudely interrupted, I was sparring. I should think that was obvious. After all, it was you who taught me how.”

The way he searched her face with _those eyes_ told her that he didn’t believe her as much as his snort did. He held her fast as he looked for his answers in the pale planes of her face. His lashes, darker and thicker than a man had any right to, flickered as his gaze lingered on the curve of her cheek, which was quickly flushing under his acute attentions.

It seemed her body would persist in its desire to play the fool, pining for what it could not have and utterly unwilling to learn the lesson her mind knew all too well. Since the coup, since she had seen how close they might have been to losing him, it had seemed harder to keep her emotions in check.

“Beating down green recruits is hardly sporting,” Kurt didn’t fight her when she pulled out of his grasp but he followed a few steps behind her as she went to collect her affects.

Maybe later, when he was gone, she could get back to hacking at the dummies. Her muscles still had a good few hours left in them before they buckled completely.

His voice, when he spoke again, was low and gruff, “Those men aren’t to blame for what happened. They were just following orders.”

Wrath flared in her blood and she whipped around, braid spinning out of control and eyes blazing as she stalked towards him. She invaded his space till the toe of her boot touched his. There was a great deal of worry in his eyes as he looked down at her but she swore there was also a tinge of amusement and that made her want to grind her teeth into dust.

“Then what would you suggest, _Captain_? Should I have pandered to their ineptitudes or taken a few token blows so that I might stroke their ego? I do not recall you ever offering Constantin or me such allowances. Or is it more fun to go hard when it’s against us ‘dainties’?” Ciel laughed bitterly, wrenching herself away from the heat of his body. It would be her undoing if she stayed, melting unbidden under his gaze.

She shook her head, running a hand through her hair until it snagged in her braid. Pulling it out with an inelegant snarl, she brushed off the hairs she had pulled from her own scalp, turning away as they drifted to the floor.

“So are you going to accept my challenge or not? There is no one here to see if you refuse. Only you and I will ever know.”

He sighed and she knew that he was going to give in.

“To arms, then,” Kurt agreed with a lightness that she certainly didn’t feel. It wasn’t the first time he’d tried to make things better between them. Normally that brash soldier’s bravado would threaten to curl her lips but she found it left her a little cold and wanting. “I won’t go easy on you just because you’re in a queer mood, Green Blood.”

“I do not want your pity,” Ciel snorted and went to the racks to pick their blades. “In that same line of thought, I assume you do not mind too much that we use live steel for this?”

She thought that she saw him wince, the hands he had balled on his hips falling away to hang loosely at his side with twitching fingers, “I have no desire to hurt-”

“I’m glad we’re of a mind,” Ciel interrupted him, shoving the length of one blade at his chest, the tip hanging somewhere around his knee. There was a moment of hesitation, where he searched her face again before his gloved fingers wrapped around the hilt. The grin she offered him was feral, her voice a purr. “I look forward to making you yield.”

There was a flicker of something across his face that she couldn’t quite place, something with a bit of heat behind it. Annoyance, perhaps? Though she knew him well enough by now to know what he looked like when his face wore that particular emotion. Half the time it had seemed the baseline state for her scowling Master at Arms. So, it was unlikely that. Embarrassment, then?

“Are you sure about this?” Kurt asked, looking down at the sword in his hand as though it might provide the answer.

“Perfectly.”

“Alright then.”

He didn’t hold back as he hurtled towards her. If she hadn’t spent half her life training against him, she might not have been able to withstand the strength behind the blow. Her wrist rattled and Ciel grunted, their swords locked in place by the cross guards.

Gods, he looked even better up this close. How could she have forgotten?

There was a moment where the weight against her seemed to ease off and her eyes snapped up to his. That hesitation was his undoing and she levelled a vicious kick at his abdomen, knocking him back.

What was he playing at? He _never _offered anyone quarter, not in any battle nor in training. _Especially_ not in training. He looked at her with surprise and she, grinning once more, offered him a cheeky bow. No longer would he treat her like some child he had to protect, even if she had to force him.

One of his dark brows twitched.

The fight began in earnest after that. He chased on the offense and she, fleeter of foot, ducked and weaved around the yard, never allowing him to land a hit. It was a dance that she led, the music the sound of their breathing, of their heels scraping the dirt. The occasional clash of metal on metal was jarring when it came, and seemed to jerk and settle in her ribs.

They struggled – panting and covered in sweat and sweat soaked dust.

Ciel coughed, darting around a dummy as she rasped. She swiped her beaded cheek against the cloth of her shoulder.

“Real combat has done you good, Green Blood. I dare say there is an improvement in your form,” he barked, following along cautiously as she led them in a tight circle. “I thought I might never train you out of leaning on your turns.”

Ciel lashed out, testing his defences, and felt their strength in the bones of her hand, “Funny. All my dance teachers said much the same.”

He battered her aside with a deft flick of his wrist, “Would you prefer to be gliding across some dancefloor then?”

“No. I dare say the company on this field is much more to my taste.”

Just as she hoped, his brows pinched in shock and he opened his mouth to reply. She didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to think about it. Dust swirled around her, coating her mouth with another earthen layer, as she lunged for him.

He fell back for a moment, almost backing into a dummy, before returning her blows in earnest. She didn’t leave him a choice as she railed on him. The music or battle seemed to halt for a moment when lancing heat bloomed across her jaw, and the scent of iron drifted in the air. She could feel the blood drip over the curve of her chin.

“Green Blood…” There was concern in his voice, almost hidden under the rumble of his baritone.

The softness in his eyes was almost too much to bare. She bit down on her teeth. The cut on her jaw flexed and burned. How often had she wanted him to look at her with something like that in his countenance? Too often, really. And now he had. All softness, pale warmth. She felt nothing but a selfish child.

Magic blossomed on her finger tips as his muscles froze in place, half way to dropping his weapon.

Ciel approached his taller form, hand lingering on his broad shoulders but a second before she cupped his jaw. Rarely had she ever allowed herself to be so familiar with him, if ever. It seemed the only time he ever dared touched his ‘charge’ was when she was injured.

Her hip brushed against his as she pressed close, the tell-tale spasms of him fighting the stasis tickling her as she brought her mouth to his ear.

The stubble on his chin burned her skin in the best way and she shivered.

“Focus, Captain.” She purred, her nose tracing the shell of his ear. “You will find I am not made of glass.”

Ciel let the stasis drop as she moved out of range, pleased to hear him draw in a thick breath. A part of her hoped it tasted of her.

“I’ve never seen you like this,” Kurt breathed, keeping the sword at his side. His brow was knit in a deep frown, his eyes searching the ground before snapping up to hers in some profound moment of clarity. “You’re _angry_.”

Of course, he hadn’t. What good would a diplomat be who couldn’t keep their petty emotions in check? No - she had to be good and calm and placid. Cunning, perhaps, when the need called for it but always level headed. Always in perfect control. She was the highly praised rock to her cousin’s mercurial tempest.

“Yes,” she replied simply, flicking her blade out at him so that he had to raise his own again.

Perhaps seething would have been a better term.

Kurt neatly backed away, not bothering to fight her. He suddenly looked like a caged animal, the training yard that held them both suddenly too small. Pale eyes darted from side to side as he licked his lips.

Gods, if she didn’t want to do that for him.

“About the coup d’état?”

“Does it matter?”

“Your wellbeing matters, Green Blood.”

“Of course,” Ciel smiled, scathing as she laughed dryly into the air. “We would not want you to fail in your _contractual duties_ to the prince, would we?”

Before he had the chance to say anything, she darted at him, dancing off to his unprotected side. Her blows fell fast and hard but he parried each precisely. There was no heat in his retaliation, no passion. He made no move against her, content to take the blows on the edge of his blade.

Slowly, she pushed him back.

“You are going to have to fight back eventually,” Ciel sneered at him as he dodged out of the way once more, back almost to the wall.

“What is this about, Green Blood?” He panted, landing an open-handed blow to Ciel’s side when she threw to much weight behind a thrust.

Winded, she backed off. She might have been faster than him but his stamina would have outlasted hers even if she had been fighting conservatively. Her hand rested on the rib he’d definitely just bruised.

“Do you not see? I was stupid, so_ very_ stupid. I should have seen it coming. We all should have but how could _I_ not? All those lessons in diplomacy, in how to read people and know their motives, how to manipulate situations to the benefit of the congregation – so that I might remain at Constantin’s side, at your-” Her laugh was a mirthless thing, filled to the brim with so much self-loathing she thought it might overflow and taint everything it touched. She didn’t want that for him but the words just kept coming. The tip of her sword dragged through the dry dirt as she wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist. “What else should we have expected from coin fed mercenaries? Loyal to nought but coin and themselves.”

“Not all of them.”

She didn’t dare look at him.

“When I think about how different things might have happened…” Ciel stopped, eyes on the ground.

_‘I’ve known you both a very long time. Too long.’_

Too long.

That hurt more than she cared to admit.

_‘Those closest to you, my darling niece, need only the shortest of daggers in order to reach your back.’_

Her uncle had undoubtedly been referring to Constantin and those who might have sought his friendship when he offered her that horrifying advice but it seemed all too appropriate now.

“I have spent the last week reliving every single moment in my sleep. Each time it is a little different, you understand. I’ve seen so many of us dead, lying mangled in the throne room.” The breath she drew in was ragged, shuddering. Edged with glass and a weakness she could not afford. Not in front of him. So, she tried to reach for the anger simmering in her only to find it slipped away between her fingers. “Constantin dies so very often in these nightmares, his blood on your hands…and mine. But more often than not its…”

_Your corpse on the floor, your blood on my blade and hands._

She tried to shake the image from her head but only succeeded in fully loosening her braid. The leather tie fell somewhere by her feet, forgotten. The image of his face slack in death was all but burned into the back of her eyelids. She didn’t know if she would have had it in her to fight him, even for the sake of Constantin and that was…_frightening_.

Constantin was her family, blood kin or no, her closest friend and confidante, her duty. She should have been willing to do anything for him.

Kurt’s lids were heavy, with grief or fatigue or something like it, when she turned to find him watching her. The scar through his lip was pulled tight with pity and suddenly her anger seemed easier to grasp.

It was all a blur when she finally lashed out at him.

“What if we had not been in New Serene? What if I had not been there for Constantin? Or what if you had never come to care for him? What if the very worst had happened, Kurt? How would I have lived with myself...?” Her cries were as desperate as her swings and just as foolhardy.

When his hand clasped her wrist, she bore them to the ground in her stubbornness – till they were scrapping like schoolyard children.

Whatever breath she had in her chest was knocked loose when he settled his body atop hers, trying to pin her thighs with his knees. Ciel struggled, hooking a leg around his and angled the cradle of her hips so that she could tip them over. The feel of him, the weight, as she almost wantonly rubbed herself against him threatened to set her alight even through the thick fabric of his armour.

But the only thing she wanted more than him on her, Gods, _in_ her, was the victory.

He only moved when she drove her forehead into his chin. His tricorne ended up somewhere in the dirt beside them.

She sat astride him for only a moment but it was enough to send her imagination skittering along behind her rattling brains. Leaping up from him, she launched herself at her sword. His fingers curled around her ankle and she was dragged down once more – chin to dirt.

Ciel kicked at his face but his grip was too strong. He easily redirected it to his padded shoulder, before dragging himself over her once more. The hand that grasped the pliant flesh of her thigh burned her, his fingers curling into her.

She feared he might leave another lasting mark on her, on her flesh and deep in her soul - invisible to all but her. It was easier not knowing what he felt like. What he_ might_ feel like.

He was surer when he pressed down on her this time, letting her feel all of his weight and strength. His nose brushed hers, their breath mingling as they both panted. Their chests rose and fell in tandem, their hearts in a race neither wanted to admit to. She started to wriggle again, needing desperately to get away from him.

“You cannot keep dwelling on the ‘what ifs’, Green blood. You stopped the coup and Constantin is safe. Everyone is safe.” He rested his forehead gently on hers and she fell still, her mouth a muddled moue. Kurt’s eyes closed, face scrunching as if he were in pain. His next words made her want to cry, made her heart want to break as they left him with a shudder. “You are safe, I swear it. So long as I have breath in my body, I will protect _you_…both of you.”

The dam inside her broke, all the feelings she had kept at bay for years and years flooding over her. They rushed into all the hollow, tightly controlled spaces within her, emptied through years of practice. It filled her and filled her until she felt she might come apart at the seams. The reassuring weight on him around her was the only thing keeping her from unravelling.

The tip of his nose traced the line of her cheek for a single, perfect moment.

Ciel wriggled one of her arms out from under him and slid it around the back of his neck, wishing idly that she wasn’t wearing gloves, that she might feel the short hairs against her fingertips. His hips threatened hers as he shifted atop her, making to move off of her, and she nearly gasped.

He felt it and stilled immediately, coiled tight, his eyes wide in horror, in apology.

“And so they say, that way madness lies,” her words were all air as she pulled his mouth down to hers.

Kurt’s lips tasted of dirt and dust even though she barely touched him, her lips featherlight as they brushed against his. Lightly and carefully, like gossamer over silk. As though he were the delicate maiden that might bolt at any moment. It might not have lived up to her childish ideals of romance but she found she didn’t care. This was raw and _real _and far, far better.

It made her ache, quivering down to her very core. There would be no coming back from this – not for her.

There was a flash of pain in her hip as his fingers bit deep into the flesh, pinning her to the ground. Not even the layers of cloth between his hand and her skin stopped the bruising force.

Ciel tilted her head, one leg coming up to bracket his hip as her hand slid around to cup his jaw. She felt the rumble in him, then tension when she touched the tip of her tongue to the scar that ran through his bottom lip. She flicked across the sensitive skin and his hips bucked, driving into hers. It might have been involuntary but it left her gasping against his mouth. Dizzy with heat.

The fingers on her hip tightened like a vice.

And still, he didn’t move.

His mouth was soft but still.

Pulling away from him might have been the hardest thing she had ever done even with the knowledge that he didn’t want her.

When she looked at him his face was crumpled in an expression of pain, his breath leaving his nose in long, noisy streams. Guilt washed over her and Ciel squirmed, trying to dislodge him. The hand on her hip kept her firmly in place, a few inches below him – ensuring they were barely touching.

His eyes were burning when he finally opened them.

“What-”

Magic welled within her.

The shadow blast that erupted from every pore of her body was strong and lifted him clear off of her. Strong enough even that she cleared his body when she rolled aside, with him landing in the dust as he rolled onto his back the other way.

His breath left him in a hiss. Her hand curled around her blade.

When she pinned him down, she dug her knees into his arms, sitting atop his chest. Her blade lay across the exposed skin of his throat. It would only take a little more pressure to draw a bead of blood from him. 

“And so, the student surpasses the teacher. How does it feel, my old Master at Arms?” Ciel asked with a smirk, canting her head with a confidence she did not feel. Her dark hair fell loose across the side of her in waves that caught the dying sun. “Do you yield?”

“I trained you well,” Kurt was looking at her as though he was seeing her for the first time, his voice thick and nigh breathless. She shifted back, leaning more on his hard stomach than his chest. A hand on her thigh stopped her from moving back any further as the other snaked around the ankle of her boot, fingers pressed hard into the bones beneath the leather. “I am proud of you.”

The sincerity in his eyes and voice broke her.

Ciel threw aside her blade and stood on unsteady legs. Ignoring the words that fell from his lips. They were a buzz in her head. Intangible and incomprehensible. Suddenly she didn’t care about the victory anymore. It was a hollow thing, suddenly all too worthy of her.

She could barely pinpoint what emotion it was that made her flee the training yard any more than she could pick apart a snagged and tangled yarn where the colours had bled together.

All she knew was that her heart hurt and she had to get away from him.


	2. Chapter 2

Kurt lowered the brim of his hat against the rising sun, trying and failing to ignore the sweat already gathering at the inner lining even though it was still hideously early. He stuck to the shaded side of the alleys as he stalked towards De Sardet’s apartments, a bundle in his arms and determination in his heart and gait.

It had been a month since the coup and three long, long weeks since the incident in the training yard – since _that_ kiss. It might well have been a year to his fogged mind, he’d seen her so little since. De Sardet had been on several diplomatic missions for the Mother Cardinal and Kurt had been left behind in New Serene to sit on his hands or twiddle his thumbs for every single one of them. De Sardet hadn’t even had the good grace to spare him a glance as she tracked them all down to the coin Tavern to ask Vasco to accompany her instead.

On that particular occasion, it had been Kurt who quit the room first, grumbling and fighting an irrational fury as he scrubbed at his face with clawed fingers. The whiskey hadn’t helped soothe his ire either when he’d finally gone back to the bar to find her gone and Vasco looking smug around his tankard of swill. Even now, he scowled when he thought of being passed over. _He_ should have been the one to go with her. It was _his_ job to keep her safe. Not some jumped up sailor.

Every time De Sardet came back to New Serene he had tried to get her attention long enough to work things out but she was always busy, always apathetic, and always gone before he could stop her. Forever slipping through his grasping fingers. One time he had tried to corner her in the library only to be foiled by a faulty lock and the poorly timed arrival of Sir De Courcillon. De Sardet had slipped out between the books and door like a shadow as the interloper busied Kurt with concerns for Constantin’s health and inability to keep up with his swordsmanship.

For a woman whose greatest skills lay within the domain of conflict resolution and diplomacy, De Sardet was as slippery and elusive as a damned eel when she wanted to be. When she didn’t want to deal with an issue. Oh, and there was _definitely_ an issue. A sylphlike issue with eyes the colour of whiskey and a voice like smoke.

None of which he could shake from his stubborn, clinging mind.

Kurt didn’t bother to knock as he shouldered his way into De Sardet’s home, only to stop short at the sight of the housekeeper. The rail-thin woman whipped around with eyes easily as wide as the porcelain saucer she held in one hand, the other she placed over her heart.

“Is she here?” Kurt asked though he was already reaching for the bannister to the staircase, his foot poised to take the first step.

She _had_ to be.

It would be hours yet before the nobles’ days began in earnest and the woman had to be making tea for someone.

“Lady De Sardet is still upstairs,” the woman sniffed, spinning this way and that as she looked for a cloth to save the bubbling kettle on the fire behind her. It was perilously close to boiling over, and the lid rattled like a drunkard without his fix. “I’ll be sure to tell her you came by…?”

The woman didn’t hear his answer for she was much too busy cursing under her breath as she pulled the kettle from the fire. Flustered and flushed from the heat, the housekeeper tucked a wisp of grey hair back into her cap and glared at him.

“I can take a message if you prefer?”

Her eyes lowered to the pile of neatly folded clothes in the crook of his arm. Clothes that were much too fine to be his. Clothes that were most definitely, obviously De Sardet’s.

A blush crept up the back of his neck like he was some whelp caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He must have looked quite the sight, bringing her clothes back to her. Given that the woman didn’t know who he was, Kurt could only imagine what was going through her head.

Nothing good or pure, that was for sure, with the way her eyes narrowed and her mouth formed a thin, white line.

“It’s urgent.”

“Even so, this is most inappropriate-”

“I’m aware but this will not wait. I’m here on behalf of the Governor.”

That wasn’t exactly a lie, though it wasn’t the whole truth either.

Constantin, despite his ill health and myriad of duties as Governor, had been quick to notice the change between Kurt and De Sardet- namely that she was no longer dragging him around behind her. To say that Constantin was like a bloodhound when it came to all things De Sardet was putting it lightly. Every time Constantin had asked Kurt about it his cagey answers had only served as fuel to the fire of Constantin’s vivid, lurid, and salacious imagination.

It was like the boy had nothing productive to do with his time.

Damned brat had even been so bold as to ask Kurt if he’d finally broken De Sardet’s heart after ‘a single night of unbridled lust and passion.’

It had been all he had not to strangle the smug little whelp, who would barely listen to Kurt’s assurances that he had in no way debauched his fair cousin. Constantin, in his usual airy manner, had declared that more the pity and suggested that Kurt storm her boudoir and _convince_ her to forgive him for whatever he had done – _thoroughly_ _convince_.

The final straw had been Constantin asking him if he knew how to pleasure a woman who wasn’t a coin tavern whore, and whether he would like a book on the subject. One with pictures. Very, very detailed pictures.

Kurt considered it a small miracle that his temper held long enough that Constantin didn’t end up with an imprint of said book in his handsome, smarmy face. 

The housekeeper shifted on her feet, reaching to fiddle with the edge of her apron.

“I’ll be sure to tell Lady De Sardet that you tried to stop me. You won’t be in any trouble on my account,” he offered gently with a dip of his head.

Kurt wouldn’t have thought there was room in her whip-thin frame for relief but she softened with it nonetheless, sinking into herself as her fingers released their twisted cotton prisoner.

“Very well. On your head be it,” she waved him up the stairs with as much nonchalance as she could muster.

“Thank you, madam. You’re most gracious,” Kurt shook his head and headed up the shrouded staircase, his boots loud on the wood despite his care for the noise.

He was suddenly very aware of how out of place he seemed in the luxurious apartments. What was he but some loud, boorish soldier? What place did he have amongst the plush velvets and stained mahogany, the marble tiles and vaulted ceilings of her life? He was ill-suited to it, too rough around the edges, too grey and cynical, to ever fit into that vibrant, gaudy life.

De Sardet deserved much better than what the son of some soldiers could offer her, which was less than nothing, but still, her voice drifted through his fractured mind like smoke, seeping into the cracks and staining the walls.

“_I look forward to making you yield.” _

It didn’t matter how many times he thought of it the memory never failed to send a shiver of heat through him. Yield? He was a man half undone, driven mad by the newfound knowledge of how she sounded, how she felt when she was wriggling under him.

Surely, he had only imagined the invitation in her words. A cruel trick of his newly yearning mind?

The weeks of silence suggested otherwise, however he wanted to frame it.

With a low groan, Kurt slumped against the wall just outside her door as his fingers bled white around the doorknob. Softly, insistently, he thumped his temple against the wall, pointedly ignoring the tricorne sliding over his hair.

His breath came out trembling and heavy when the soft scent of honeysuckle reached his nose. It still stubbornly clung to the coat and ascot held tightly in his arm despite having spent the better part of a month at the bottom of his trunk.

Just another thing that haunted him while he lay alone in the middle of the night.

Even dirty and covered in a faint veil of sweat De Sardet had smelled faintly of the bloom her maids used to scent her clothes and bathwater – fresh and sweet. Would she have tasted as sweet if he had allowed himself a moment of weakness? If he had kissed her back? If…

More ‘what ifs.’

That way madness lay, indeed.

He could have left her affects, of course, without ever having to lay eyes on her. Perhaps even given them to the housekeeper downstairs to deal with, to clean and press and return to her wiped free of the evidence of that day in the barracks.

Resting his temple on the wall, Kurt considered it for a moment.

If it wasn’t for feeling, for the first time since they left the continent, that he needed a reason to see her, to speak to her, he might have handed over the garments.

Taking a deep breath and injecting some steel into his spine, Kurt turned the knob and slipped into De Sardet’s room, only to pull himself up short. His breath shuddered to a halt, stoppered behind the heart that seemed to sit lodged in the middle of his throat. The door behind him seemed to slide shut with a creak that might have burst his eardrums in the oddly muffled silence of the room were it not for his thundering pulse.

The room was lit with the warm glow of an early summer morning, hazy and soft. The curtains – heavy velvet monstrosities – were thrown wide to allow the slight ocean breeze to trickle in through the gaping windows. The lace lining beneath had pulled free and fluttered on the paltry wind, rising and falling in a silent dance.

Even so, the room was still stiflingly hot.

Which went some way to explaining the rather _precarious_ position he found himself in.

A bead of sweat escaped from under the lining of his hat to ooze down the line of his temple.

De Sardet was still fast asleep, breathing slow and even. She was lying on her stomach, one hand tucked under her pillow and chin folded beneath one shoulder. Russet hair, burnished in the sun, lay in loose waves and curls over her shoulder and back. Her skin was flushed and pink, covered in a thin dew that made his jaw ache.

And there was a lot of skin to see because De Sardet was very, _very_ naked.

The thin sheet, if he could even call it that, a single last remnant of her bedclothes proper, was pooled low over her hips and clung to the rise of her-

Good gods above, if the dimples in the small of her back didn’t threaten to unman him completely.

The clothes in his hand hit the ground with a soft thud that seemed to reverberate through his body, ringing in his muggy head.

How would she react if he were to run his rough fingers over the dips in her muscles? If he were to taste them? What would she sound like when she was moaning for him-

Suddenly his tongue felt too large for his mouth and he palmed his jaw, looking at the door behind him. If he left now, she would never know he had been there. He should have listened to the housekeeper. He should have never come-

“How long did you plan to stare?”

Kurt’s head snapped around to find De Sardet looking lovely and dishevelled and _quite annoyed_ as she scowled at him from her plush mattress. She was curled around like some basking siren, voice thick with sleep, a tucked elbow only just preserving her modesty.

What man in his right mind, and Kurt hadn’t felt in his right mind for weeks, wouldn’t face such wrath for even an eyeful of her? There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that men had been lured to the depths for far less.

“I-” Kurt whipped around to face the door, ignoring the fabric piled at his feet. Clearing his throat, he desperately tried to wet his mouth. “I didn’t mean to intrude, my lady.” 

Kurt rarely referred to her as such, preferring her title as legate or his childhood nickname for her, but how could he refer to her otherwise when she was very much a lady at that moment? So utterly, achingly female.

Warm and naked and within arm’s reach.

The very thought near had him gnashing his teeth.

He’d always known that De Sardet was a beauty despite what the dainties’ said about the mark that curled around the corner of her jaw but he had always looked at her through the lens of a man paid to be responsible for her. They were separated by status and profession and the apathy that afforded him and whilst he cared about her, and Constantin, it was a distant thing. Or it had been before she had shattered that lens. She would never be the epitome of noble aesthetics, with high cheekbones and sharp lines but she had an ethereal quality and sweetness about her, in the curve of her cheek and the fullness of her mouth.

And now he knew exactly how that mouth felt, how it had moved against his with heat and insistence. His apathy to her looks lay shattered at his feet in a thousand sharp little pieces that might never fit back together the way they had previously.

De Sardet’s displeasure was a very indelicate puff of air from her nose, “And yet here you are, Captain. Intruding.”

He could hear the mattress give way as she moved to stand, could almost feel the whisper of the sheet over her skin and the pad of her bare feet on the floorboards. The desire to turn towards her burned in his muscles, as though he had been standing in that same position for hours or days. As did the desire to turn the handle and leave, to put the solid wood of the door between him and temptation.

“I wanted to return your things. You left them-”

“I know very well where I left them,” De Sardet snapped and his eyes fell shut, brow pinching and shoulders tensing as though he were being yelled at by a superior officer. She sighed, her voice less sharp when she continued. “Thank you but you could have easily returned them without breaking into my bedchamber.”

And given her another chance to avoid him? Absolutely not.

Kurt started when he heard footsteps on the staircase, accompanied by a rattling of silver that indicated the housekeeper. Throwing a panicked look at De Sardet over his shoulder and without thinking too much about it, he turned the large brass key in the door.

The knob rattled when he pulled his hand back and stepped away from the vibrating doorframe.

“What’s this?” The housekeeper asked with a huff, jimmying it harder. Even muffled her tone dripped with high-pitched derision. “My Lady? Will you be wanting breakfast later then?”

De Sardet chuckled softly before replying in a clear, serious voice, “Just leave it outside the door please, Marie. I’ll collect it in a moment.”

“I don’t see why-” the housekeep begun to argue, spluttering and spitting as the silver rattled all the louder, “-why– what- this is most irregular.”

“That will be all, Marie. Thank you.”

The muttered disapproval continued until the housekeeper cleared the staircase completely and even then, there was a definite slam of a kettle lid in the following silence. 

“You needn’t have locked the door,” De Sardet scolded him, still sounding faintly amused.

“You would rather she see you entertaining some man in nothing but a sheet?” Kurt fought the urge to turn around and gape at her.

“Who says you’re the first man I’ve entertained in such a fashion?” De Sardet purred in a way that had him flushing about the collar like a boy at the same time that the very idea almost gave him a tick at the corner of his eye.

He drew in a deep breath, scolding himself for such a possessive reaction. He had no right to it. No right, at all.

“You’re much too gracious a lady for that.”

And her housekeeper far too scandalised for this to be a regular thing.

“And yet here I am, next to naked in my bedchambers with a man who is not my husband,” De Sardet’s tone was light and teasing but there was something electric underpinning it that reminded him of the kiss, the heat and the taste of her. “And if anything, you’re the one that seems to be scandalised by it all.”

Not scandalised enough to leave, however.

A heavy silence fell between them as Kurt tried to justify staying to himself; they’d never get over the awkwardness if he didn’t.

Kurt turned to look at De Sardet.

She was half-veiled by the shafts of sunlight piercing through the window, the dust dancing around her frame like lazy, hazy fireflies. Her eyes were dark as she considered him, one hand resting on the post of her bed as the other kept the sheet up by her chest. The light made the sheet glow brightly in its own right and he could easily make out the dip at her waist before it flared and flowed into the curve of her hip and the smooth line of her thigh.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Kurt said tearing his eyes away, his tongue once again too thick and heavy in his mouth.

Lifting his chin, he folded his hands in front of him as he took up an ‘at ease’ position, though ease was the last thing he felt. His body was burning, restless and stilled only by the confines of his will. Every part of him from the bones in his clenched fingers to the frantic throb of his heart and the heaviness of his stomach seemed to wrench and twisted in want of her.

“No, I have not-”

“You have, Greenblood,” his interruption was sharper than he intended, a jagged reminder of his discomfort that made her flinch. When he took a step towards her, De Sardet’s fingers tightened on the bed’s post and he stopped. “You find a reason to leave a room as soon as I enter it and you haven’t taken me out with you for weeks.”

“Maybe I needed the others more,” De Sardet scoffed.

“You needed the sailor for business with the Mother Cardinal?”

“And a _coin guard_ might be better suited, I suppose?” Anger simmered under her terse words, a remnant of the coup perhaps? “What business is it of yours what I might need Vasco for?”

What business, indeed.

De Sardet looked up at him when he said nothing, only to wince at whatever she found in his face. Turning away, her eyes fluttered shut and her brows pinched.

Kurt fought the sudden and acute urge to take her in his arms and smooth the notch away with his fingers, his mouth. Instead, he jerked away from her, putting another foot of space between them in the cloyingly small room.

As if a nobody like him had any right to touch her with such intimacy.

“Forgive me,” De Sardet said after a tense moment, falling to lean against the bedframe with desultory petulance. “I spoke out of turn.”

He almost laughed at the reluctance in her words and something inside him, something coiled and tight, eased. It reminded him of her growing up when she’d been too stubborn to do _exactly_ as she was told and found her own little ways to rebel. 

“You’re awfully forgiving,” she drawled, frowning at his wry smile, “when you don’t have a sword in your hand.”

“And a lesson to teach,” Kurt agreed easily enough.

De Sardet snorted and tossed her head, catching the light in such a way that he could see the faint bruises nestled underneath her eyes. Regret for waking her settled like a cannonball in his stomach.

“You’re still having trouble sleeping, I take it? You look tired.”

De Sardet raised a brow before chuckling dryly, “And that’s just a polite way of saying I look terrible.”

“I’m hardly some gilded tongued-” when her eyes flicked down to his mouth, his voice dropped to a rumble of its own accord “-noble who cannot say what they mean. Terrible is the last thing you look, Green Blood.”

The blush that overtook her, starting softly on her exposed collarbone and travelling up to suffuse her cheeks with rosy warmth, was almost worth the desire to bite off his own tongue.

“What?”

“I-nothing,” Kurt shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest as he moved to lean on the bed frame next to her. “We should talk about what happened at the barracks.”

“What is there to discuss? I trounced you fair and square.”

“Ciel…” he rumbled in an exasperated warning, rubbing at the back of his neck as he shot her a sidelong glance. When her mouth formed a muddled moue and she shivered, Kurt stood and reached for her. “What’s wrong?”

“I had begun to suspect that you don't know what my name is,” she drifted past him, sheet dragging softly over the floorboards. The room seemed to still as she drew in a breath, her shoulders bowing. “I was rather hoping we could forget about it.”

“And when were you going to stop avoiding me?”

She looked at him over her shoulder with the eyes of a doe, a flush of guilt taking over the bridge of her nose even as she laughed softly, dryly, “It must seem utterly stupid that someone who negotiates daily for the mighty Merchant Congregation can barely steer in the turbid, white-capped waters of her own _personal_ affairs.”

The self-deprecation had him frowning at her.

“Affairs of the heart are often complicated.”

Her smile was a wan thing, “And who said anything about heart, Captain?”

He refused to even acknowledge the way his stomach seemed to drop past his feet at such a thought. Had he been wrong? He liked to think that he knew her well enough to know that those kinds of tactics weren’t her style.

“Would you have been avoiding me so vehemently were the kiss only an attempt at distraction?”

Either way, he wouldn’t hold it against her. He might be below her station but he was flattered and his ego was stroked. If only that was the long and short of it.

“A fair point, well made,” she snorted. “A pity too. It worked rather well.”

That it did, leaving him shell-shocked and nigh unable to move at all. It had not been a gentle introduction to the reality that his charge was no longer that, no longer a young woman he could look upon as a child or some sexless friend. The attraction brought on by her kiss and left to simmer without peace these weeks gone by with barely a glimpse of her was a sharp little stone in his chest.

One that would not be dislodged no matter how he tried. But even if it would not be removed, he would most definitely learn to ignore it.

She looked at him from under her lashes, swiping nervously at her lip. Standing up a little straighter, he waited for whatever bad news seemed to be coming his way.

“I can’t seem to bring myself to be sorry for it.”

That was not what he had been expecting.

“What?”

“I am sorry that I made you uncomfortable, do not mistake me on that. I would never want you to be uneasy with me,” her finger shook when she ran them through her hair, tugging at the ends. “However, I cannot and will not bring myself to regret it, not when…”

Her voice seized in her throat and she clutched the sheet, almost tucking it up under her chin.

If he had been a better man he wouldn’t have pressed her. He would have given her the out and lived without knowing the answer. But the words were out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

“When?”

Her eyes searched his for a breathless moment before falling to the floor, “When I have wanted it for so long.”

“How-”

De Sardet’s laugh was airy but cutting and it struck him silent, “Much too long, I’m afraid.”

“That’s hardly an answer, Green Blood.”

“No, I don’t suppose it is,” her head lolled and she looked at the ceiling.

How would she react if he were to sink his teeth into the delicate column of her throat? If he were to kiss and suck as he sunk his fist into her hair and pulled-

Kurt physically recoiled at the strength with which he used to shut those thoughts down.

Her voice was barely even a whisper when she spoke again, “It’s hard to pinpoint. Since I was a girl, perhaps? Though at first, it was just the novelty of being exposed to someone so different from the foppish men of the court. I’m surprised you did not notice my mooning, I’m told it was quite obvious. Constantin teased me mercilessly for it whenever he thought he could get away with it.”

He had noticed that she held a curious fondness for him despite his being a grumpy and often harsh tutor but he had never considered it anything more than childish admiration and later the beginnings of an adult friendship and mutual respect.

“It was not until I was a woman full-grown that it became anything more.”

More? _More_? Kurt’s head swam but he managed to keep the strangled noise of surprise deep in his throat.

De Sardet was looking at him with such expectation in her sweet face that he grasped for something, anything to say.

“But what about that young dandy you were making eyes at not so long ago?”

A rueful smile curled the corner of her mouth, “Ah, yes. Armand Maréchal.”

“That’s the one. Poncy little thing with an eye for the ladies.”

“He did rather have a bit of a reputation…and the wandering hands to back it up,” De Sardet snorted but her eyes were filled with a mischievous twinkle that made his heart soar.

Until he realised just exactly what she said, “Wandering hands?”

De Sardet waved his concern away before blanching as the sheet slipped from her fingers, nearly cascading past all of her curves.

A sharp heat blossomed in his wrenched neck muscles when his head snapped around and away from her. The curse sitting behind his teeth died with a hiss and he studied the moulding on the ceiling as though his life depended on it, reaching up to rub at his burning muscles.

The laughter, when it came, was sweet and breathless and very, very welcome.

When he finally turned back, he found her chuckling at him, her bottom lip caught between her teeth as she clutched the sheet to her form, trembling with mirth.

“If you must know, I was never interested in Armand despite his attempts to _persuade_ me otherwise,” The smirk that overtook her features was smug and cheeky. “I fractured his wrist when he pushed a little too hard. I put your lessons to very good use, I think.”

Kurt recalled that particular ball with as much fondness as he recalled the migraine that followed the day after. Eventful would have been putting it too lightly. Not only had the Maréchal boy been escorted out with a ‘dancing injury’ and a face like thunder, which he now knew was all De Sardet’s work, but Constantin had been found in a pile of curtains in the wine cellar _entertaining_ the giggling daughter of some duke. To say that the Merchant Prince d’Orsay was displeased wouldn’t have done the subsequent shouting match between father and son justice.

“Besides, I only ever looked at that young idiot to make you jealous,” De Sardet shrugged one shoulder before gliding over to her door and unlocking it, leaving Kurt gaping at the skin between her shoulder blades. Evidently, she could feel the disbelief boring into her spine, “Don’t look at me like that, I am aware of how foolish I was. I just wanted you to look at me as something other than a child, and one that needed your protection.”

Whether she needed it or not, she would always have his protection.

“Clearly you didn’t. You handled yourself just fine,” when De Sardet bent down to try and pick up the tray, he touched her elbow. “Let me.”

He picked up the tray and brought it to her vanity, noting with some fondness that it was covered in paper, ink, and more quills than anyone would ever need. There wasn’t a bottle of rouge or perfume in sight. The smile on his face froze when he heard soft light fabric hit the floor and before he could open his mouth to ask what she was doing, he caught sight of her pulling on a shirt in the mirror.

The spike of heat that kicked him low in the gut had him digging his nails into the vanity. He watched her move longer than he should have, eyes lingering on the hem of the overlarge shirt where it skimmed her thighs, just below the curve of her ass. Only when she reached down to slide a pair of breeches on did he jerk his eyes away, reaching with shaky fingers for the teapot.

“You’re not having any?” De Sardet asked him as she sat down in the vanity’s stool, clothes once more. He watched as she rifled through the drawers, pulling out sheaves of paper and books with a frown.

“You know I have no taste for it.”

“All the more for me,” a noise of triumphant pleasure rumbled in De Sardet’s throat when she pulled out what she was looking for: a throng of leather that made him feel guilty all over again.

The scent of peppermint grew stronger with each passing moment until it was all he could taste.

De Sardet eyes fluttered shut in rapture when she finally sipped the odious beverage, and she sighed, “You always make the best tea, Kurt.”

That shouldn’t have flattered him as much as it did. It might have been the fact that she finally had referred to him by his name for the first time in weeks. He wasn’t aware of how much he’d missed it until that moment.

“Well then, what do you say to my foolishness?” She asked after another sip.

Kurt stared at De Sardet for a long, pregnant moment before answering, “Foolish only in that you’re looking so below your station.”

“My station?” The clink of china on silver was angry and sharp when she slammed her teacup down and swivelled to face him. “And what if I didn’t care about that?”

And if horses were wishes, beggars would ride.

“I thought we talked about what ifs?” Kurt scolded her gently, leaning against the post and crossing his arms over his chest.

Craning her neck, De Sardet considered him through narrowed eyes, “Yes, I believe we did.”

Kurt cleared his throat, rolling his shoulders a little until the solidness of the wood against him grounded him enough to speak again, “For what it’s worth, Green Blood, I don’t see you as a child.”

A wry smirk curled a single corner of her mouth, “No? We have conducted almost all of this conversation with me in _nothing_ but a sheet and you seem woefully unaffected.” 

If only that were the case.

“I-” he tried to say something, anything really, but his mouth closed with a click.

She stood and closed the distance between then, placing a tentative hand on his chest, directly over his heart, “Were it the other way around, I fear I would be nothing but a puddle on the floor. The first time I saw you with your shirt off I thought I might swallow my tongue.”

Kurt snorted, “Scars and rough manners are hardly attractive, Green Blood.”

Not to her lot, anyway.

“You might not say that if you heard what the women at court say about you behind your back,” she whispered with a mischievous twitch of her brow.

His hand wrapped around hers and she drew closer, “Novelty does wonders for a man’s appeal. You said so yourself.”

“Oh, Kurt. Your appeal is all _you_,” she said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, as though she were utterly exasperated by him. Her eyes blazed with conviction as she frowned up at him and he was more than a little flattered.

But flattery was all it would ever be – all it _could_ ever be.

He chuckled and squeezed her fingers, dropping his hand to his side and stepping back, “Your kindness does you credit, my lady.”

De Sardet rolled her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself, “It was not kindness that made me throw myself at you the way I did.”

No, just a foolish infatuation that would fade in time. After this conversation, they would say nothing more about it and they would go on as they did before, he’d make sure of it. She would forget about him in time, meet some dandy and marry him as a lady of her station should. And Kurt would do his best to forget about her.

Perhaps he’d teach her children to mind their footwork too.

His chest swelled with a bittersweet feeling that threatened to crush him from the inside out.

Kurt took another step back as he cleared his throat, unable to look her in the eye, “Any man would be flattered by the attentions of such a lovely young woman.”

Her fingers when they came to brush along the line of his jaw were soft and hesitant. The madness in him, wrought nigh a month past by her hand and mouth, was half-convinced he only imagined it.

“But not you,” she said it as a statement but he could feel the question in it, could hear how her feelings hung in the balance. It dangled between them, suspended on the sunlit dust, and threatening to snap in but a moment, with only a word.

He might have claimed on numerous occasions to be a cold-hearted man but he found the idea of hurting her in any way abhorrent – even if he knew it was for the best.

“I am, Green Blood. Truly,” he tugged her fingers away from his person and pretended not to notice how they trembled. Meeting her gaze squarely, he said, “Your husband, whoever he ends up being, will be the luckiest of men.”

The sharp breath she sucked in was louder than shattering crystal in the quiet, raw and slicing. Kurt stood still, willing himself to be calm and distant, lest his will unravel completely but it still hurt to watch her gather herself close and refuse to meet his eye.

“I see.”

Cold and distant should have been exactly what he wanted from her but for some reason, it left him frigid.

“I have disappointed you.”

“Never, Kurt. Never that.” She said, licking her lips and blinking furiously. A bead of moisture clung stubbornly to the fan of her dark lashes. “It was not anything I did not already know. I just hoped- No. It doesn’t matter.”

“Ciel…” he started before falling silent. For what could he possibly say that wouldn’t wound them both much more in the long run?

Drawing in another sharp breath she turned to him and offered him a false smile. The same smile she used to court the nobility, to lead and manipulate her quarry, “You should probably leave or my reputation will be so tarnished that no man will ever want to marry me.”

“You are right, as always,” even now, with all the hurt and the tension, he found he didn’t want to. He’d never see her like this again, dishevelled and raw and _for him_. Soon enough that would be a sight for another.

He’d cherish it all the more for it.

“I’m sorry, Kurt. Truly. About…everything,” De Sardet said with another sad attempt at a smile. It faltered and flickered.

Kurt swallowed past the lump in his throat, “As am I, my lady. More than you will ever know.”

Before he could stop himself, he was leaning down and pressing a kiss to the lovely arch of her cheek. The faint scent of honeysuckle lingered in his nose. So very soft and sweet and shuddering as she melted against him, twisting the fingers of one hand in his gambeson.

Nothing in his life, _nothing_, was harder than pulling himself away from her at that moment.

But he had never been a weak man.

He was halfway out the door when she called, “Kurt?”

“Yes?”

Her voice was wet but strong and it made him so very proud of her, “We leave New Serene in a few days, I suggest you prepare.”

“Of course. I’ll be ready whenever you are.”

When the door squeaked shut behind him, he leaned against it and let out a stuttering breath of his own. Pulling off the glove of his right hand, he looked down at the leather throng wrapped around his wrist – a small token of her that he could keep forever, along with the memories. 

It was all he’d ever have of her.


	3. Chapter 3

It was no lie that the Mother Cardinal of Thélème threw some of the most lavish, outrageous, and utterly decadent parties – though only a handful of people would have believed Ciel if she were to say it out loud. It was only a pity that this particular function was totally above board and thus utterly boring.

Ciel had no doubt in her mind that they all would have had a better time at one of Cornelia’s ‘select’ gatherings, held in the basement to allow for some more lascivious activities.

The company of a whore was better than that of an Inquisitor any day of the week. Not that there were any members of the Ordo Luminous to be seen. Perhaps even this paltry ‘party’ was too salacious and impure for their rigorous and fragile ideals.

Of course, that wasn’t to say Cornelia hadn’t put any effort into this party. It was lovely if you had a taste for stiflingly high collars and delicate sensibilities. The state palace was wreathed in lush garlands and verdant bouquets of winter wildflowers in the palest of pinks, blues, and whites. The air dripped with the lulling, exotic scent of jasmine and the pale undertones of the sage and musk that Thélème used during service.

The floor was waxed to perfection, the shine beckoning with crooked finger in the dim lamp and candlelight of the hall. The live band were…something. Really. A string quartet, they filled the hall with sombre, wailing versions of Thélèmic hymns.

It was a wonder anyone was enticed to dance at all.

Ciel stood in a shadowed corner of the hall, content to play the observant wallflower as Constantin drew the majority of notice. He was currently in the midst of a small crowd, waving and gesturing flamboyantly as he laughed and chatted. Kurt stood by her cousin whenever she dared a glance, as finely dressed as she had ever seen him and looking bored out of his mind. Petrus, the very man that insisted they attend this event, had disappeared early in the night. To where only the Gods knew. Ciel expected he would reappear out of the woodwork whenever he felt ready to strike at the good Mother Cardinal.

The rest of her merry band had chosen to stay at her home with a bottle of rum or two and an old deck of cards, salt-soaked and faded.

If she left now there might be some rum left…

Ciel smiled when the tall, gracile frame of her cousin approached, finally free of his adoring horde of giggling young women. Where there esteemed Master of Arms had gotten to, she had no idea. Anywhere, probably, so long as it wasn’t near her.

For a man who didn’t like to be avoided, Kurt was very good at doing it to others. It seemed that he no longer wanted to spend a moment with her outside of a professional setting. Even out on the road, he barely had a word for her after they set up camp.

“Good gods, have you ever been to a more tedious ball? And here I thought Father’s functions dreary …” Constantin groused under his breath, slipping into the shadows with her. “I’m tempted to sneak out and head to the coin tavern for a decent drink. Do you think anyone would notice my absence?”

“Yes, they would,” Ciel scolded him with a hard look before taking a crystal fluke from a passing sever that had found them even in their secluded corner. Constantin snorted but followed suit, clinking his glass against hers with subdued solidarity.

Both of them took a long draught before wincing in sync. Grumbling ever so eloquently, Constantin eyed the wine as though it had killed his firstborn. Ciel sniffed at the red liquid, not too far off offence either. Cheap and strong was her usual taste and this was neither. The deep scarlet hue was either a trick of the dim light or a clever ruse by their stodgy hosts.

“Watered-down wine not to your taste?” Ciel asked with a sidelong glance before downing the concoction in a handful of unladylike gulps. There was no way that she was going to nurse that swill for any longer than necessary.

Somehow, despite being more water than wine, it left an acrid, burning aftertaste in the back of her throat.

“I’d be very surprised, Fair Cousin, were it to anyone’s taste. It’s ghastly, honestly. I don’t even think this Merlot Supérieur has had a moment to breathe.”

How he knew what vintage the wine had been in life, she had no clue, but her cousin was the curator of many odd talents.

“Perhaps this vintage was San Mateus’ drink of choice,” it was an offhand comment, murmured lest any of the clergy overhear, but the drink did have a familiar bite to it. Ciel rubbed her tongue over her palate, unsurprised that it was very like the tonic taking during service on the continent.

“And that is why he was a prophet and not a sommelier and more’s the pity for it,” Constantin took her glass and handed it back to the same waifish server, barely pausing for breath before he took another fluke and downed that too. Grimacing again, he wiped at his mouth with a silken kerchief and continued. “The church would be a far more interesting place to visit were all the old men drunk as fish. I may even stand a chance of making it through a service.”

The server was content to wait as Constantin worked his way through the wine, eyeing her oblivious cousin with a heavy-lidded gaze.

“As it is, should you be drinking in your condition?”

“Condition? Gods, you make me sound like a woman with child,” shuddering none too dramatically, Constantin waved away the server and leaned against the dreadful wallpaper with desultory grace. “Just because the fare of Teer Fradee does not agree with me does not mean I cannot partake in its…”

“Subpar wine?”

“Precisely. I would kill for a good Vin de Sang Rouge.”

“Have you tried sweet-talking one of the servers?”

“You wound me, sweet Ciel,” Constantin rested a hand over his heart before smiling ruefully, a lock of sandy hair falling into his boyish features. “It was the first thing I tried.”

Scanning the room, Ciel wasn’t surprised to find the very attentive server still watching them.

Clearly, Constantin hadn’t asked the _right_ server.

What she was surprised by was the lean frame of one Sir de Rohan stepping into view, making his way rather briskly towards them. The grin he wore might have been described as roguish were he not nearing the end of his midlife and the last of his hair.

“Dance with me,” it was more a hasty command than a request and Constantin raised a brow at her tone, all casual imperiousness as he tried to shake her off.

“What was it you were just saying about my delicate condition?”

It was moments like this that Ciel remembered a little too vividly that her cousin was a capable man and governor, more Machiavellian than anyone gave him credit for, and a massive pain in her ass.

“Constantin d’Orsay, if you care even one jot for me you will dance with me. Right now,” hissing and panicked, Ciel dragged him towards the waltzing couples by his captured sleeve.

Chuckling, he took her in arm. It was effortless the way he slipped into the same step as all the others, leading her in a way that only he had ever been able to. Craning her neck, she looked over her shoulder to find Anthony de Rohan deflated at the edge of the dance floor, watching them with pursed lip. 

Constantin followed the line of her gaze before laughing heartily to himself. The urge to trip him over his own sure feet was childish and overwhelming but she managed to resist. _Just_. 

“Oh, I see how it is. You’re avoiding the attention of Sir de Rohan,” Constantin was quick to tease her with a shit-eating grin that she had knocked off his face more than once as a child. “Poor man. I’m sure father would think it a wonderful match.”

“All the more reason for you to save me then,” Ciel glared up at him, squeezing his hand pointedly. “The man talks about nothing but his vast wealth and his desperate, desperate need for a fine, _young_ wife.”

Constantin shocked her when he missed a step, nearly catching her toes with his boot before he recovered and spun them rather sloppily in time with the yowl of a violin. After a moment her grip on his slim bicep loosened and she looked up at him, only to find him gazing down at her with an opaque yet probing gaze. Heat prickled on the arch of her cheeks.

“What?” She couldn’t help but writhe under the stare, tossing her head and fighting the uncomfortable urge to look anywhere else but at him.

“It’s a shame that Sir de Rohan does not know that your heart belongs to another,” Constantin muttered, grimacing like the words left a bad taste in his mouth. “Are you ever going to tell me what happened between you and our dear Master at Arms?”

Stiffening and blanching, it was her turn to miss a step…or three. It was only Constantin’s arms around her that kept her upright and moving in time with everyone else. There was no chuckle or smile to be found at her misfortune though, just a vague and troubled frown. Pulling Ciel closer with a heavy sigh, Constantin dropped her hand and tucked an escaped wisp of hair behind her ear.

He led with such grace it was as though neither awkward moment had ever happened at all.

Hammering and inconsistent, the rhythm her heart was beating on the underside of her ribcage made her chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with embarrassing herself. It was almost as though she could feel the pulse and prickle in the boning of her corset, biting into her skin.

Unable to meet his eyes, to watch the candlelight flicker over his shuttered features, she said, “I have no idea to what you are referring.”

She felt the sigh shuddering through his chest like the trembling fire in the middle of the volcanic island they now called home.

“Don’t play dumb with me, my sweet, coy cousin. It doesn’t become you,” Constantin scolded her with a dark look that made her want to shrink under him like a chastised child. She could barely recall him ever using that tone with her. “Don’t think I didn’t notice your little falling out.”

Ciel frowned but raised her chin.

“How positively astute of you, Constantin. I would never have thought you capable,” she snapped back, confused as to the sudden turn in atmosphere.

Constantin blinked down at her before grinning ferally at her empty venom. In the dim, shifting light, it wiped away the dark circles under his eyes. It was almost as though he were fully himself again, even if his demeanour was a little too triumphant for her taste.

Feeling like she had lost some game she didn’t know she was playing, she sighed, “It was nothing more than a misunderstanding.”

“And I suppose that’s why he’s spent the majority of the evening staring this way then?”

Ciel dismissed the challenge in his tone, unwilling to point out that she stared at Kurt often enough to know he never looked at her, “Perhaps he’s staring at you. That is his _job_.”

“If our dear Captain were in the habit of staring at me like that, I would have taken that stallion out for a ride long ago.”

“Constantin!”

He just ignored her and shook his head, more ashen hair falling into his face. The grunt in the back of his throat was frustrated and sharp, “You know that I just want you to be happy, do you not?”

The air took on a strange feeling as he looked down at her, like the static anticipation before a lightning storm. It looked like he was fighting with himself, a myriad of emotions crossing his face until it settled on something soft and…heart-breaking? Even his fingers seemed to tighten infinitesimally on her skin.

“Oh, Constantin…”

“I swear you are both as stubborn as one another,” he muttered, all dark softness disappearing from his periodically shadowed visage. Just as quickly as it came, the odd moment passed and Constantin returned to himself. “Do I not have the right to know who is leading my fair cousin astray?”

The lecherous teasing had her back up immediately.

“You most certainly do not. Just because you’re happy to air your torrid affairs around…” Ciel’s voice cracked and she had to resist the urge to ‘accidentally’ step on his tones. “I am not being ‘led astray’ by anyone.”

“Perhaps you need a distraction,” Constantin pulled up to his full height and jerked his chin off somewhere behind her. “There is a rather lovely server that keeps looking over this way.”

Peeking off over the side of his shoulder as Constantin spun them again, she saw that the server was still watching them with heavy lids, his eyes following along in the wake of Constantin’s trim frame as he pulled at his ascot.

“And what would you have me do with him, pray? Should I sneak him down to the wine cellar and make love in a nest of curtains? Or perhaps I should let him bend me over a balcony so that we might look at the stars while we-” Ciel drew in a disconsolate breath, stilling her frustrated rant, and rolled her eyes. Rather than looking scandalised by her crass words, Constantin sniggered like a schoolboy. “Besides, he is looking at you, not me.”

“I would never have credited you with such a salacious imagination, fair cousin.”

“Which is entirely your fault. I’ve caught you too many times not to have been _influenced_,” Ciel drawled, shuddering as she tried to suppress the memories. “It’s a wonder you haven’t combusted under the boy’s gaze.”

“Are you sure he’s looking at me?

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that it is always him that refills your glass. If only he knew your distaste for his offering.”

“The wine might be more agreeable were I to sip it from another’s lips,” Constantin murmured, looking over her head.

She felt rather than heard him suck in a breath.

And so, the server had him hook, line, and sinker. Constantin had always suffered weakness for pretty faces and willowy frames – in men and women both.

“Just don’t let the Mother Cardinal catch you, please. I’m still traumatised from the time that de Courcillon almost caught you rutting with one of the stable boys in the rose garden.”

Constantin was utterly unrepentant as he chuckled, the hand on her back squeezing good-naturedly.

Letting go of her hand, he slyly beckoned the server over, “You have always been my sweet-tempered saviour. When has there ever been a pinch you could not get me out of?”

“And if anyone should ask where you have gone?”

“You’ll come up with something, I’m sure.”

“Your ceaseless faith is astounding.”

“You’ve never failed me yet.”

The smirk that curled Constantin’s lips was utterly wicked as he stepped out of hold, offering her hand to the shadow that appeared by her shoulder. Ciel turned, expecting to see the server with a tray in hand, but instead found herself nose to solid chest with the second last man she wanted to see. Panic flooded her chest, choking her stuttering heart with its inescapable tide. Her eyes were wide and wild as she rounded on Constantin, finding herself unable to glare at him for all that she wanted to.

“Kurt, my good man, do me a favour and take over. I’m feeling positively dizzy,” Constantin said, completely ignoring her as he pressed a fluttering hand to his temple. All whilst offering hers to Kurt.

“Constantin-” Ciel’s tone was less the quiet warning she was aiming for and more a desperate plea.

“As you wish, Your Excellency,” Kurt agreed readily enough, searching Constantin’s face for signs of illness with well-veiled concern.

“Constantin-” she started again only to fall silent when he bent over her.

“I can’t have you falling into the hands of Sir de Rohan now, can I?” Constantin crooned in her ear as he pressed a chaste kiss to her cheek.

“You are going to pay for this,” she hissed under her breath, taking a deep, piercing breath when calloused fingers wrapped around hers. Rough and warm and so unlike the noble smoothness of her cousin’s delicate, long-fingered hands.

“Who…I’m…paying now?” Constantin’s quiet words were lost to her under the shifting music as he turned his back to her, giving Kurt one last nod as he left.

“Is that something I should be worried about?” Kurt asked her as they both watched Constantin stalk towards the server, his careless charm taking on a rather predatory edge.

The server did not stand a chance.

“No, nothing,” Ciel said, choosing to say nothing of her cousin’s shifting mood.

The hand that settled very properly between her shoulder blades near had her bolting from the ballroom like a horse from its stall on race day. Even so, the masochist in her wished that the ball was thrown anywhere else so that she might have worn a lower cut gown that exposed her shoulders. The idea of his fingers on her bare skin was enough to have her shivering.

Still, at least she could still feel the sheer warmth of him through the thick velvet.

“I’m sorry that Constantin roped you into this, he…” Ciel whispered, unable to look anywhere but at his Adam’s apple as he started moving them in time with the other couples. “Well, you know how he is.”

It was a sweeter tune now, but still awfully sad sounding, though she didn’t recognise it as any hymn she knew. There was an odd lull as she fell silent, the wide space between them filled with the lamenting band. From the cant of his chin, which she could just make out in her periphery, Kurt was focusing just as intently on the space above her head.

His voice was quiet and an odd kind of rough when it finally came, “The kind of gossipmonger that’d put a fishwife to shame?”

“And then some,” Ciel agreed, surprised when he led them expertly in a very tight, neat circle. Where had he learned to do that? “I sometimes wonder if he were not the son of a Merchant Prince whether he might have been one of those awful, trashy writers. Or, heavens forbid, a _poet_.”

Under normal circumstances that would have earned her a rueful shake of his head or perhaps a rusty chuckle. Instead, it earned her crickets. Swallowing, she grasped for something, _anything_, that she could say that might ease the thick tension between them.

“I dare say whatever he chose it would have been banned continent-wide.”

It took a moment for her to even realise he had spoken, never mind for his actual words to sink into her foggy, scrambling brain.

She laughed airily, “And swapped by ladies of the court under cover of moonlight.”

He relaxed at the sound of her joy, the stiff lines of their dancer’s hold melting fractionally and bringing them almost a breath closer together. It wasn’t anything close to being easy between them but it was better.

“All these years and I never knew you could dance,” Ciel said, finally tipping her head to look up at him.

He had shaven.

It shouldn’t have surprised her that he could, really. He was a graceful enough fighter, adept at employing a myriad of weapons and combat styles, and lethal with it too. Footwork and rhythm had been the cornerstones of his lessons, employed long before he’d ever let them hold a weapon.

But still, until that moment, Ciel was under the impression that Constantin was the only man that could successfully lead her in the ballroom. All the other boys who had tried during courtly lessons had failed, finding her impatient and argumentative. The teachers had despaired at her refusal to follow their meek steps and her inability to play nice. In the end, the two of them had been given private lessons on their own to save on childish squabbles.

Constantin was the only man she’d follow. Her uncle’s wrath had made sure of that in their early youth, just as her perpetual fondness for Constantin made sure of it now.

Kurt’s jaw was flexing and he winced when the cellist hit a drawn-out, sour note but still he refused to look at her, “I’ve never been asked.”

Ciel snorted and rolled her eyes, “I know that is simply not true. I’ve seen plenty of pretty young things ask you at my uncle’s functions.”

She remembered because her childish infatuation had flared in a jealous rage whenever someone had, reminding her of those little lizards with the bright frills that spread wide when provoked.

Finally, he looked at her, a frown knit between his heavy brows, “I’ve never been interested then.”

It was pathetic, really, the way that little comment made her want to light up from the inside out. There was even a new lightness in her step that she hated and a fluidity to her movements that hadn’t been there before as she ebbed and flowed with him across the polished floor.

To her lovesick mind, he surpassed even Constantin in skill.

“Where did you learn?” She finally asked, breathless and smiling stupidly after a particularly intense set of spins.

“One of the local girls offered to teach me after I was assigned to you whelps,” Ciel winced at the nickname, the smile wiped from her face before it had even fully settled into the apples of her cheeks. “Only the Gods know why she thought I might need it.”

She knew well enough that he was trying to maintain a professional distance between them but it still plucked none too gently on her fragile heartstrings. It seemed that with her pushing her feelings on him she had killed their burgeoning friendship too.

“Clearly she had more foresight than you,” she said quietly, swallowing against the lump in her throat.

“True enough.”

They fell into another silence that had her wanting to thump her head repeatedly on his shoulder. Or a wall. She was beginning to think that she would rather Constantin had thrown her at Sir de Rohan. At least then she could just smile and nod and not try so damn hard.

Or hurt so damned much.

She would have given just about anything to have their easy camaraderie back. To have them laugh and tease and gripe at each other as they had before. She had told him, back in her bedchambers, that she didn’t regret kissing him…but now she wasn’t so sure.

Was one near-perfect moment of sublime relief and truth better than their friendship?

Confusion swirled in her chest like a thick, choking smog.

“She was sweet on you?”

Ciel almost tore herself out of hold at her own stupid, _stupid_ question. Why, oh why, would she ask such a thing?

“I think so,” he said, hesitant as he considered the answer. The concern in his gaze made her bristle but had her smiling reassuringly at him. He snorted before he shook his head, “Not that I realised till much later.”

“Oh, I can easily believe that,” perhaps she should have just bitten out her tongue and saved herself from further embarrassment. Tossing her head as though she hadn’t a care in the world, she continued before he could say anything, “What happened to her?”

He shrugged, a wry half-smile gracing his mouth, “Last I heard she married a farmer from outside Serene and popped out a couple of kids.”

“The perks of a simple life,” the wistful sigh that skimmed the roof of her mouth died behind her teeth. “To think that could have been you.”

“Hardly, Green Blood.”

Ciel tried her best to keep her tone light and teasing, “Domestic life not to your taste? No desire for some mini Kurt’s running around your feet?”

Why did it feel like something very important, and so very fragile, depended on his answer?

“I’m not sure I’m the fatherly type,” he snorted, pale eyes shrouded and inscrutable. When she shook her head with a smile, he raised a brow. “You disagree?”

“I do, actually,” Ciel smiled softly, stepping closer to him when another couple danced too close, too wrapped up in each other to care. “I imagine that if I had the chance to meet young Reiner, rest his soul, I would have seen exactly what your paternal streak wrought. He sounded like the best of men.”

His fingers twitched around hers at the mention of his protégé and he swallowed hard, the prominence in his neck bobbing.

“He was but he had the making of a good man long before I ever got to him,” Kurt disagreed with a pensive sigh. “I’m disappointed you never got to meet him.”

The careless couple danced too close once more and Kurt’s hand drifted to her waist as he pulled her closer and out of the way of the lady’s voluminous skirts. It stayed there even as they whirled away, burning a brand on her skin even through the thick material of her dress and corset.

“Me too,” Ciel murmured, tilting her head at him, “but I think you underestimate the influence you have on others.”

“Oh?”

“You don’t honestly believe that you’ve had no impact on Constantin or I beyond swordplay, surely?”

“Your cousin is a force unto himself. I doubt anyone other than you had any positive impact on him. Gods know the rest of his family did not.”

“Before you came to us Constantin often got himself into fights with the other children. In fact, I can barely summon a memory of the time in which he did not have a bruise or some such on his face,” Ciel sighed and shook her head. How could he think so little of what he’d given them? “Sometimes it would come about because of some court rivalry, or that someone was poking fun at the mark on my face. Other times it was simply because _he could_.”

“I remember one such fight in my early tenure. He wore a splint on his fingers for weeks.”

“And still you made him train with it,” she snickered softly at the memory of Constantin’s outraged face, his baby fat trembling about his jaw as he held his hand tight to his chest. “Do you remember what you told him when he threw a fit about it?”

“Can’t say I do, Green Blood.”

Despite his blasé denial, she had a feeling that he did remember.

“You told him that an ill-tempered child like him would never be fit to rule as a prince of the Merchant Republic if he didn’t learn to rule himself first. That when a ruler makes a mistake all his people suffer for it, whether he wants them to or not,” there were few lessons that Constantin remembered and this was one of them – it had been quite the turning point for her high-spirited cousin. “He tried to argue that his fight only affected him but you pointed out that I was upset about it, that I blamed myself and my mark for his injury.”

Growing up she had blamed the rough blemish on her face for a lot of things: for the isolation from her peers, for the strange looks from strangers and relatives alike, and for being a constant reminder to her mother of her father, lost at sea. Acceptance had been slow, aided by the unconditional adoration of Constantin, but it had come eventually. It was a part of her and there was little she could do about it now.

“You were the first one to believe in him – in that he would surpass his father’s rule easily were he to only smooth out the chip in his shoulder and _learn_,” Constantin had sulked about that for weeks after but slowly he had mellowed and begun to throw himself into his lessons. “I don’t think you realise what your support has meant to him. To both of us.”

The music was lulling, coming to a close and the hand on her waist fell away. Her hand remained in his though.

Kurt’s gaze was heavy and solemn, “Constantin had you, his stalwart protector. He would have been just fine. You both would have.”

“We’re family, it's different. You have no ties to us beyond a _contract_,” she couldn’t help the bitterness in her tone at the truth of it. “It means more coming from you since you could have left whenever you wanted.”

“I’m not so sure-”

“The time has come, my child,” Petrus’ rough voice drifted over her shoulder as his hand clasped her elbow.

Kurt dropped her hand as though she had burned him.

“Very well, Petrus. Lead the way,” Ciel turned to Kurt with a polite and well-practised smile. “If you’ll excuse me?”

“Thank you for the dance, my lady,” Kurt bowed shallowly to her, surprising her enough to send a flutter of traitorous excitement through her torn, stubborn heart.

How was that that she could equally want to be away from the awkwardness and want to still be wrapped up in him? It took everything in her not to look back over her shoulder as she dutifully followed in Petrus’ wake, bearing down on the unsuspecting Mother Cardinal.

The woman was looking flushed about the cheeks, the hue clashing terribly with her ceremonial garb, and was talking animatedly, with fast hands and words, with a young page boy. The poor thing was gripping a half-drunk glass of wine as though his very life depended on it.

“Lady De Sardet! I do so hope that you’re enjoying our little party,” Cornelia practically buzzed with alcohol-infused enthusiasm as they approached.

It did not go unnoticed that the only acknowledgement of the man at her side was a flicker of eyes and frown. Petrus, much to his credit, smiled and bowed to the woman and boy.

“They have a gift from the Enlightened, truly,” Cornelia beamed at the compliment before she shooed the page boy away. Ciel didn’t doubt their God-given talents so much as their taste, or Cornelia’s taste for that matter. “Now, do come into my study. I guarantee that my personal collection of wine will be more to your taste.”

Unless it was the wine that she used to ply and relax the whores for her _other_ parties, Ciel wasn’t interested. Throwing Petrus a pointed look over her shoulder, she followed Cornelia into the lushly decorated office.

Banners to The Enlightened hung on every wall that was not lined with leather-bound books, the great eye of the sun shining down upon them all. Ciel shuddered, grateful that Cornelia didn’t notice as she pressed a glass of rosy liquid into her hand. It was faintly sweet but to her, it just tasted like bubbles. Still, it was better than the watered-down merlot.

“You may leave us, Matthieu,” Cornelia waved away her guard as she settled into the plush comfort of her highbacked chair, beckoning for them to sit across from her in the same motion. “Now what can I do for you both?”

Petrus spoke first, raising his eyes from the wine to pierce Cornelia in place. His voice, always rough and deep, was even scratchier than normal, “Why, we have simply come to offer our support in these trying times.”

Ciel sipped at the wine, watching the two of them size each other up like two lone wolves that had happened upon the same dead elk.

Cornelia leaned over her desk, the beginnings of a frown nipping at the corner of her mouth, “Trying times? What in heaven’s name do you mean, Petrus?”

“We mean to say that the arena has not been kind to you of late.”

The mocking tone settled over Cornelia’s face like a lead weight, pulling her features down into an uncomfortable grimace as her eyes widened until there was an uncomfortable amount of whites around her irises.

“How-” the strangled word fell out of her mouth before she regained control of herself, settling back into her chair. Ciel could almost see the woman’s need to tap her oval nails on the surface of the table but Cornelia was much too practised to give into her tells. “I see. Now that I think about it, there is a great deal many similarities between the arena’s newest champion and yourself. You fought well, Lady De Sardet. Too well, as it happens.”

Petrus was practically preening beside her, stroking at his moustache with thick fingers, “Quickest defeat in the history of the establishment, they said. I made a tidy profit myself.”

Cornelia’s demeanour was nothing less than icy when she finally turned her gaze towards Petrus, “You told my…contact that you would throw the match. I had planned to walk away that night a very wealthy woman.”

“You would do well to lend your trust more cautiously.”

“A wise sentiment, indeed. Now, tell me: what do my misfortunes have to do with you, Petrus?”

“I merely took the place of your moneylender,” Petrus drained the last of the wine and flashed Cornelia a predatory leer. “You owe me a handsome sum.”

“And so, the noose has tightened…well played, Petrus,” Cornelia offered graciously as she stood, fetching her decanter and refilling their glasses. “Though I would have hardly expected this kind of behaviour from you, Your Excellency, but with such a teacher…”

Ciel looked at the older woman coolly, raising her glass in a salute before taking a very long draught.

Petrus scoffed, “Oh, come now, Cornelia. Save us your coy disapproval, it will not change anything. We both know just how well you excel at this kind of game.”

“I do, though you seem to have forgotten just how well, perhaps,” Ciel looked over to Petrus to watch how her words affected him. He barely reacted at all to the vague threat. “What is it you seek from me?”

It was Ciel who spoke, her voice light and pleasant, “I’m aware of how _tenuous_ Constantin’s position is as a young and new governor. Support for him and your loyalty to our continued interests as allies here on Teer Fradee will ensure our silence.”

“Seeking to improve your young Cousin’s position shows wisdom not often found in one so green as you, Lady De Sardet. I applaud your foresight, though I do suspect you had help,” something like approval shined in Cornelia’s eyes as she bowed her head in acknowledgement. Her voice was less welcoming when she turned once more to her true opponent at the table. “You, Petrus, surely had something else in mind. Perhaps my support whilst you once against court the rank of cardinal?”

Ciel fought a frown and glanced at Petrus.

“We can speak of that another time. No doubt your partygoers will be missing your presence.”

“Why not now, Petrus?” Cornelia leaned forward again, her smirk razor sharp. “Unless you mean to say you’ve forgotten the hardships of last time. Have you not learned your lesson?”

Petrus shifted in his seat, his fingers tightening to white around the fragile crystal glass in his hand, “Cornelia…do not break your oath. My confidence is protected by the seal of The Enlightened.”

Cornelia waved a hand in Ciel’s direction, “Does Lady De Sardet not deserve to know the truth?”

“The truth of what exactly?” Ciel asked, looking between the two of them. Cornelia looked like a cat with a fresh-caught mouse and Petrus like he was about to be swallowed whole. “What is she talking about?”

When Ciel laid a hand on Petrus’ forearm he flinched.

“Do not do this, Cornelia. Please.”

Ciel wasn’t sure whether the flinching or the pleading alarmed her more.

Cornelia was the one preening now, picking a piece of lint from her sleeve, “Come now, Petrus. You of all people should have seen this coming. Your secrets are as easily illuminated as my own.”

Ciel bristled, feeling like a small child whose parents were trying and failing to argue discreetly in front of her. Placing her glass on Cornelia’s desk with more force than necessary, she folded her hands in her lap.

“As amusing-” Ciel drawled with a withering look for each of them, “-as these little riddles are…do tell me what is going on. Now.”

“Child…” Petrus reached over to clasp her hand.

“Lady De Sardet is hardly that. Does she look like her, Petrus?” Cornelia asked, a nasty grin curling her mouth. She was met with only silence and her terrible smile widened, her voice smug as she continued. “Well, since you have no intention of speaking, I will. Petrus knew your mother, child. Your real mother.”

“My real…?” Ciel pinned the Mother Cardinal with another scornful look. The woman ignored her and swirled her wine. “My mother was at court when he arrived, of course he knew her.”

Her next words struck Ciel cold, “The Princess De Sardet did not give birth to you. Did she, Petrus?”

That could not be true, she was born at the palace in Serene. Her mother was the Princess De Sardet and her father, whom she resembled down to her mark, was a man lost to the sea…A mark that supposedly marked her as an on ol menawi…that tied her to the island of Teer Fradee.

Her breath caught in her throat.

“What do you mean by this?” Ciel stood abruptly, her voluminous skirts swishing about her ankles as she did so. She stared down at Petrus, who was looking at the floor as though it were the finest of forlorn art. “Petrus?”

“I…” looking up at her after a long moment of tense silence he took a breath, licking at his lips. “I used to visit the d’Orsay jail and offer my services as a spiritual guide to the prisoners there. That is where I met her.”

“Met. Who?” Ciel’s voice was hard, her body stiff with the repressed need to shake.

“Your mother.”

“My _mother_ was a criminal?” That the pitch of her fractured voice was audible to human ears was a surprise.

Petrus shot Cornelia a petulant look before shaking his head, looking sadder and more lost than she had ever seen him, “No, though at the time I did not know the truth of her origins. The princes kept their secrets well. She was a stranger in an even stranger land – alone, afraid and beyond exhausted.”

“How could you? Why did you not-” the shaking would not be stopped. The vibrations started in her hands, working their way up into her shoulders and neck until even her teeth wanted to clatter as if she stood knee-deep in snow. “You knew that my uncle was lying to me - and my own mother! How could you not speak up? How in heaven’s name could you keep your silence?”

He looked up at her with dark, liquid eyes – looking every inch a kicked puppy. Somehow that only made her angrier. What right did he have to sadness when she was the one that had just had the fabric of her reality ripped out from under her? How _dare_ he?

“I do not expect you to understand yet,” he said, so very magnanimous in his understanding of her feelings. Her teeth gnashed as his nose twitched in disgust and self-loathing swept over his features. “I was filled with such shame. How could I have left her to die alone in that pit? Alone and so very frightened?”

The urge to pace settled in her ankles like an itch she would never quite reach, along with the inexplicable need to rage and writhe and break everything in Cornelia’s _comfortable_ study. How many more secrets did they have hidden in the cracks of the walls? How many times had either of them manipulated her and used her before this?

“So instead you told others? Her?” Ciel hated the way her own voice splintered on the last word, her finger levelled in Cornelia’s impassive face.

“At the time Cornelia was The Ear of The Enlightened,” Petrus explained, standing and attempting to take her hand once more. “In telling you this, she has broken her vows.”

“Petrus came to The Enlightened in a fit of despair, as so many others have before him. In order to lighten the load of this great burden…”

Ciel had to bite back the need to politely tell the old crone to shut her lying mouth.

Shut up. _Shut up_. **Shut up**.

Taking a deep breath did not help quell her feelings. And so, she stood, shaking like a leaf in the breeze of life, as her own feelings, scorching hot and freezing cold both, threatened to drown her. To crush her spirit and her weak, shivering body.

“I have wanted to tell you this since the moment we met on this island,” Petrus’ voice was quiet, his skin scorching as he squeezed her hand.

If he meant to offer her paternal comfort, to soothe the wrenched, gaping abyss he’d ripped into the very fabric of her heart, it did not work. The touch chaffed and rubbed her raw, near daring to the flake the skin and flesh from her bones.

Wrenching her hand away, she straightened her back and raised her head. She ignored the quaking her limbs as surely as she ignored the pity in their looks and their black, deceitful minds. 

Her voice, when it came was ice, “And yet you did not. Instead, you have kept me in the dark and used my ignorance to fuel your ambition. So that you might further your own schemes.”

“I-”

“If you’ll both excuse me. I find that I am suddenly very tired,” blinking and smoothing a docile smile over her face, Ciel curtsied to them both. “Do enjoy the rest of your evenings.”

“Child-”

“Enough,” Ciel sneered as she swept past him. “I have heard more than enough.”


	4. Chapter 4

Ciel felt the hefty slam and shudder of the door at her back down to the depths of her very bones. It rattled in her flesh like the hinges in the frame and was enough to release the tightly leashed shakes she had done her best to suppress as she had stridden from the Mother Cardinal’s study.

Out. She had to get _out_.

Her fingers were chapped and numbing as she wrung them – a habit from her childhood she thought she had shed long ago. Its reappearance was just another unwelcome truth of the evening. Keeping her head down, she skirted past the groups of people in sedate silks and lace, velvets and satins. Like a mouse out of place, scared that she would be noticed and pounced on for conversation.

That the music and mood were lighter now, upbeat even, was a little knife between her ribs. Short enough to miss anything vital but long enough to niggle and rub whenever she moved, unwilling to be ignored. The click, click, click of her sensible heels on the waxed floorboards of the hall was lost under the merry-making, yet deafening to her all at the same time. Perhaps it was because she could feel the beat in her bones, settling in and gnawing at the marrow.

Out. Now. Before someone found her. Before Constantin-

Did he know?

Did they all know?

Was she just some blind, little fool who had been played like a fiddle by everyone she had ever known and loved? Just _whose_ tune was she dancing to?

Gods, did Kurt know too?

She wasn’t sure whether it was the jasmine, once soothing and so welcome, that worked its smoky tendrils into her lungs to try and choke her or whether it was the nausea. The latter rolled through her like a shot put to the stomach and she clasped a hand to her mouth, unsure what exactly was trying to escape from her wretched body. Locking her knees, she kept going. If only she could just make it to the door…

Close. So very close.

It was but a few steps away when Kurt melted out of the shadows by her side, his mouth opened to speak.

It wasn’t intentional but she recoiled from him as a stilted sob fell from her trembling lip. Blood and iron bloomed on the tip of her tongue as she set her teeth to it, praying that she might hold it still.

She was a Legate of the Merchant Congregation, for heaven’s sake. What would her uncle think to see her now, snivelling like some child who had lost their blanket?

“Green Blood, you’re- what happened? The alarm in his tone chipped at the ramshackle dam that held her emotions in check. How many would it take before it burst completely? A gentle hand wrapped around her bicep, coaxing her to face him, “You’re white as a sheet.”

She fought him, tried to shake him off, to pry his fingers from her but she only succeeding in tangling her fingers with his, “Nothing. I’m fine.”

Her skin was cold and clammy even to her own touch.

Kurt scoffed and his grip tightened, not enough to hurt her but enough to quell her struggles as his other hand cupped her hip, his fingers digging into the bunched fabric of her skirts. Slowly but surely, he spun her around to face him, though she kept her chin tucked tight.

Like a sullen and avoidant child.

Gods, she was pathetic.

Kurt wasn’t above ducking down to seek out her gaze though, sighing heavily when she turned away from him.

“I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re lying.”

Not for a lack of trying, however. She had learned very early on that Kurt could sniff out a lie more often than not before she was even finished uttering it. The smell of that terrible jasmine filled her throat and lungs as she drew in a hot and smoky breath, her eyes fluttering as she groped for resolve.

She barely touched it with her fingertips but it was enough. Tipping her head, she met his gaze squarely.

“I’m leaving,” she announced as confidently as she could, though the concern on his face nearly sent the frustrated tears she held back spilling over her cheeks. Ciel drew in another shorter, sharper breath and said. “Tell Constantin that I’m feeling under the weather, please, whenever he decides to resurface.”

But still, his hand remained firmly on her form, keeping her pinned in place. Who could say how or why she found herself staring at the fingers he had nestled in the dense folds of her skirt, mind wandering like a drunkard as she unwittingly ignored his words.

“-a minute?”

She didn’t know what he said and she couldn’t bring herself to care either. Sighing, she pulled away from him and rubbed at one of her temples. It was beginning to throb in time with her breaking heart.

The doorknob was practically within arm’s reach, she should just reach out and grab it.

“Kurt-”

“A minute, Green Blood. That’s all I ask.”

She nodded curtly and he disappeared between the throngs of people. The wall was cool against her back as she pushed herself close to it, sinking as best she could into the room’s gloomy edges. The last thing she wanted was to make small talk with any of those people, no matter how charming or polite or funny they were. If she could have borne Kurt’s wrath she might have just slipped out whilst he was gone.

It felt like forever before Kurt reappeared with her shawl in one hand and his hat and overcoat in the other. Slipping on his tricorn, he handed her the shawl and opened the door out of the ballroom.

“Come on, I’ll take you home.”

The fresh, cold breeze that blew through the open door was almost enough to make her sob anew. It was crisp and verdant in a way that had nothing to do with the Mother Cardinal’s incense.

Her voice was soft as she protested, “This isn’t necessary. I can make my way home by myself.”

“This isn’t up for discussion,” Kurt rolled out one of his shoulders, nodding to a servant that slipped through into the ballroom via the door he held. “You’re not armed.”

“Neither are you,” wrapping the light shawl around her shoulder, Ciel stopped in the doorway, looking up at him with a strength she didn’t feel, “You should know better than anyone that I am always armed, Captain.”

The flash of recognition in his eyes might have thrilled her any other time but now it failed to provoke any kind of reaction in her at all.

The walk through the palace and down the vast number of stairs into the city of San Mateus proper was silent but not awkward. There was no room for that in her mind or soul. It felt petty now, so inconsequential. Still, Ciel could feel a prickle across the back of her neck, covered in gooseflesh from the cold of the night, every time he glanced at her. His concern was palpable.

The throbbing in her head only increased threefold in the frigid air, her mind as lost at sea as her imaginary father – drowning alone in the darkness. She wanted to ask Kurt if he knew, if she was as stupid as she felt, but the words always seemed to fizzle and turn to air in her throat.

“I take it things did not go well with the Mother Cardinal?” He finally asked, sparing her another of his anxious sidelong glances.

The sound of both their shoes on the cobbles seemed to ring around the narrow alleyway as she considered her answer.

Eventually, Ciel blew out a long breath that she had been holding in her cheeks, her face puffed and aching. Everything hurt like she had been thrown into the surf outside New Serene and left to be buffeted by the rocks and coral for days and nights.

Her exhaled air spiralled off in front of her as a white cloud of vapour, disappearing out of sight, “On the contrary, I expect that the Mother Cardinal will be one of Constantin’s staunchest supporters in the coming years.”

“Then why do you look like someone died?” Kurt’s tone was light but it stopped her dead in her tracks.

Ciel looked at his back with wide eyes, her lower lip clenched between her sawing teeth.

“Green Blood?” he asked, turning to look at her.

Clearing her throat, she loosened the fingers clawed in and about her shawl.

Weak. So _weak_.

Still, she could not lend her voice any strength or vitality. It was a whisper when she finally pushed her dreaded thoughts into the air beyond her parched tongue, “I think they did.”

He was next to her in an instant, “What are you talking about?”

“I think _I _died?” Ciel looked up at him, searching his eyes for some sort of understanding and finding only confusion and worry. “Or at least the person I was when I woke up this morning…”

“I don’t understand.”

Neither did she and the only ones who did were liars who hid the truth behind their ambition or shame. Wrath, scalding and effervescent, flared and raced in her blood. Simmering like an itch just below her skin.

“It’s quite simple,” Ciel snapped. “I am the bastard child of a criminal at worst or some displaced native at best. The offshoot of some woman left to rot and die alone in my uncle– the Prince d’Orsay’s- jail.”

“What?”

“It’s hardly surprising, is it? Everyone the continent over knows that my uncle is a bastard. Ruthless and cunning and excellent at what he does, perhaps, but a bastard nonetheless,” Ciel all but spat the words, her vitriol written clearly in her black tone. “I’ve seen the way he treats Constantin, his own flesh and blood. Why would some little nobody be of concern?”

Why had he done it though? What did he expect to gain by inserting her into his family? She doubted it was the feel-good rush of doing something altruistic. But then…Perhaps it had nothing to do with him at all. Perhaps her moth- the Princess had taken a liking to her, childless as she was and ripped her from her birth mother.

Kurt reached out for her when she laughed bitterly, his thumb stroking over her cheek for the beat of a hummingbird’s wing. Gone as quickly as it had come. His voice was soft, so soft and tender, “De Sardet…”

“But I am not De Sardet! That’s the point,” Ciel seethed, her pitch and volume escalating until they threatened to break her ears. “I am not Lady De Sardet. Nor am I the daughter of the Princess De Sardet or fair cousin to Constantin d’Orsay. I am something to be used, I think, a Legate in name only.”

A token title for a token relative?

No, she was good at what she did and there was no one more willing to support Constantin. They had all made sure of that with the lessons and the guidance… Made sure that she was a perfect protector and devotee.

Kurt winced as she spun away from him. Chewing at her lips she paced the cobbles, passing from the deep shadows of the houses to the moon painted street in irritated measure. Back and forth and back and forth.

Finally, she raised her arms out at her side, the shawl slipping off and landing on the slick cobbles at her feet, “I am nothing more than an imposter, ripped from the arms of one woman so that I might be given to another. A savage to be moulded and shaped and dressed up like some novelty doll!”

And just as swiftly as the anger had filled her up with its heat and its venom, it was gone. Flowing out in a rush that left her reeling and dizzy. It seemed like her entire form sagged around her very own bones, all that hurt and anger slipping out between her gasping lips.

_Pathetic_.

“I’m a _nobody_.”

Kurt was gaping, his mouth opening and closing as he wrestled with everything that she had just dumped atop him, “I knew your uncle was something else but this?”

So, he didn’t know then. He wasn’t a competent enough liar to pull off such disbelief and it was certainly not his style to try it either. The relief at such a thought was akin to taking off her corset at the end of the day.

It was almost like she could breathe again.

Almost.

It still niggled at her, somewhere in the back of her mind. Could she trust his reaction or her intuition anymore? After all, she had never suspected Petrus of hiding something.

And there was still the matter of her dear, sweet cousin.

The thought of his face when she told him the truth, if he didn’t somehow already know, near sent her crumbling to her knees. What was she going to do? How could she…?

“How am I ever going to tell Constantin?” Her name might well have been despair for all she seemed to belong to it at that moment. So little room inside her for anything else. Even her heart was slow and heavy, crushed under the weight of it.

Kurt was beside her again, leaning down to pick up her shawl. He turned it over in his hands, tutting when he found it covered in the muck and debris of the streets. She barely even acknowledged him when he settled his coat over her shoulders, his chin sliding over the top of her head as he wrapped it around her.

“Don’t tell him anything until you know there is something to tell him,” Kurt murmured into her hair, his breath hot on her scalp. “Wait until you have your answers.”

“And where am I supposed to find those? Petrus?” Ciel whispered into his collar, breathing in the strong scent of him. Cedar and the oil that he used to keep his sword in good condition. “He’s hardly proven forthcoming or even trustworthy. He only told me the truth because the Mother Cardinal forced his hand.”

And how was it he had not anticipated that happening? Petrus was a man with a reputation and one that preceded him. How could he have been so blinkered – someone supposedly so ambitious and cunning? Surely, he must have known that Cornelia would not take her humiliation lying down?

Kurt hummed as he manipulated her pliant arms into the sleeves of his coat. It was warm and study, practical but easily as finely made as any that Constantin or the other men of the court wore. It was less gaudy and elaborate, she’d permit him. But where had he gotten it? And more to the point, why? Kurt was hardly the type to buy something that was so overtly…upper class.

“If your mother was a native then there’s only one way that she was ferried back to the continent.”

A heaviness settled about her collarbone as he waited for her to say something, straightening up the collar of the jacket. She almost sighed when his fingers skimmed the underside of her jaw and for a moment everything winked out and went blessedly silent.

Just a single, perfect moment.

“So, we go to the Nauts then?” Ciel asked, tipping her chin up so that he could slide the final button through the loop at her throat.

The coat was much too big for her. If it had been any other night, she might have laughed at how ridiculous she must have looked. As it was, she wanted to curl up inside of it and never come out.

“They keep track of everything. There’s no way that they don’t have some record of your mother if she was on board one of their ships,” Kurt stepped away from her as he cleared his throat, his eyes glistening darkly as they roved over her. “If you want to know the truth, that is.”

A choice. Her choice. That he even respected that was…

She softened and a smile almost made its way to her mouth. It felt like the first in months, even though it had been less than an hour in truth.

Suddenly, the foot of space between them didn’t seem so large or impassable, especially since she was swathed in his clothes and _his_ scent. It soothed her even though it shouldn’t have. She had no right to it, he had made his feelings on that painfully clear.

Without much thought, Ciel slipped her hands into his pockets, surprised to find a loose piece of leather there. Long and slender, and with enough smooth spots for her to know it had been worried at a great deal. Her fingers fiddled with the material, following the ghost of their predecessor, as she thought over her answer.

“I…don't know?”

“I will have your back, Green Blood, whatever you decide,” Kurt assured her, taking one of her hands – the one without the distracting material at its fingertips– and slipping it through the crook of his arm.

She was content to let him lead her through the streets, the fingers of one hand curled around his bicep as the other busied itself in his pocket. Under other circumstances, they might have been lovers out for a stroll in the moonlight, arm in arm. She lay her temple on the curve of his shoulder. It was nice to pretend for a moment that everything was fine, that he was hers. If only for a moment.

The tide of her emotions didn’t seem so insurmountable when he was near.

“Thank you,” she uttered when they turned a corner and her apartment came into sight.

As if she could ever thank him for all he did for them, for her. There weren’t enough words in all the world to do it justice. And it would only make him uncomfortable if she tried. She already knew what he would say about it: that it was his job to take care of her, to look out for her and Constantin and that was all it was.

That was all that it ever was and would ever be.

The fire was still burning brightly from what she could make out. Given that she had bowed out of the party quite early, it wouldn’t surprise her if Vasco, Aphra, and Siora were still playing cards and making merry.

She’d have to work right quick so that she could muster a smile for them.

“Is that the one?” A rough voice, clipped and decidedly of a lower class, spoke from off to the side of them.

“Aye, that’s her alright,” another answered as a handful of men in stolen guard uniforms stepped out from the shadows and onto the street, circling them.

Kurt’s hand wrapped around the fingers tucked in his elbow. She felt his feet move, his weight shift, as he took on a defensive stance. Sinking, tightening, winding like a deadly spring.

“Where’s the old man at, pretty lady?” One of the men asked, stepping directly in front of them and putting himself firmly between them and her home.

If this turned sour, they were too far away to hope that they others might hear them, if they were even sober enough to hold their weapons the right way around. No, they were on their own with this one. 

The man was bearded and stunk of stale beer and smoke, the cheap undertones of a whore’s perfume clinging to him like moss to an eternally damp wall. Leaning down so that their faces were level, he leered at her with a gap-toothed smile. The dank smell of his breath made her want to cover her offended nose with a sleeve, lest she end up gagging.

Sliding her hand out of his arm, Kurt shoved himself between her and the man.

“Well?” Another man asked slyly, stepping close enough to her side that her elbow rubbed his considerable gut.

Kurt seethed, fist flexing, probably all too aware that even as her staunch protector he could not be in two places at once.

“There are a lot of old men on Teer Fradee. I’m afraid you will have to be more specific,” Ciel drawled, eyes flicking between each of the men.

There were five of them, maybe more if some were still hidden in the shadows. Against the two of them, who were weaponless to boot. The odds weren’t great but they could have been much worse. She could practically hear Kurt berating himself for being caught unawares without a weapon, though he didn’t need it to be lethal. Neither of them did. Still, his concern was certainly written in the tense lines of his shoulders.

All of the men around them were armed and sliding their weapons free from their belts. Poor quality but sharp enough to kill, they flashed in the moonlight. There were no heavy, ranged weapons to be seen on any of them and, thankfully, no guns either. They seemed to carry an assortment of cheap short swords or daggers.

“Don’t get smart with us. You know we mean old Father Petrus,” The man at her side ran his thumb over a short dagger in what she was sure was meant to be an intimidating display. “Candy cane has been looking for you both. He’s rather…_upset_ that you didn’t keep your end of his generous bargain.”

“Candy Cane assured me that if I tried anything funny, the Champion would wipe the floor with me,” Ciel offered sweetly, rolling her eyes. “Perhaps he should be giving him a talking to for being so easily beat.”

The man on the other side of Kurt growled and reached for her, “Why you-”

“Easy now,” Kurt cooed with a soft, menacing tone as he wrapped a hand around her assailant’s wrist, squeezing until she could almost hear the bones shifting and grinding. “That’s a Legate of the Merchant Congregation that you’re threatening. Surely you’re not here to make war with a Merchant Prince?”

That had the others shifting and mumbling, their eyes flickering uncertainly between each other. Finally, they all looked at the man squirming like a worm in Kurt’s merciless grip, grim determination on all of their faces.

There was no way they were getting out of this clean.

“And who are you?” The bearded man, probably the leader of this merry little group, spat as he ripped his wrist back to freedom.

Backing away as far as he could without appearing weak, he glared at Kurt with a sneer on his slick lips. He rubbed at his injured appendage, already reddening and promising a bruise. Ciel peeked around Kurt’s shoulder, laying a gentle hand on his elbow.

“Oh. I see how it is,” the man barked, his laugh scratchy from long-term abuse of alcohol. He slapped at his knee like whatever he ‘saw’ was the funniest thing he had ever heard. “The Legate enjoys to slum it, does she?”

Kurt bristled, tension winding its way down the muscles under her finger, coiling in the tendons of his fist. He looked down at her when her fingers twisted in his shirt.

The man to the side of her chuckled and leaned over her, his voice low and suggestive, “If that’s your thing sweetheart, the boys and I could show you a much better time than this-”

“Don’t-” Kurt growled as his fist sunk into the man’s face with a stomach-churning crunch, knocking him to the mud, “-talk to her like that.”

“Kurt-”

“Settle down, lad,” the leader snarled, laying the flat of his blade over Kurt’s heaving shoulder. With a soft snort, he touched Kurt’s chin with the point of the short sword.

“Or what?” Kurt sneered, turning and allowing the blade to slice cleanly through his skin as though it were nothing.

A rough hand wrapped around her arm, tugging her so forcefully away from Kurt that she yelped and her shoulder burned. She tried fighting when her back touched someone’s chest, only to stop dead when a sliver of metal touched the skin of her neck.

“Or we’ll carve up your lass’ pretty little face,” the nasal voice of the man holding her, the same man that should have been on the ground nursing a broken nose, rumbled in her back. He took the blade, angling it so that he could run it down her cheek. “She’s already in the boss’ bad books, don’t make it worse for her.”

Hot blood smeared across her ear as the man nuzzled her.

Kurt blew a breath out from his nose, scarlet blood running down his chin and curving down his neck. Disappearing into the shadow of his collar.

“My, my. You are a sweet little thing,” hot, rank breath blossomed over her cheek and neck as her captor ran his nose along the line of her hair, leaving more blood in his wake. “Hard to believe that you defeated the champion of our arena. I’m not sure I believe what they say about you.”

Stomach roiling, Ciel turned her face as far away from the lips near her skin as best she could.

Kurt was watching the man paw at her with the most intense rage she had ever seen on his face, near vibrating with it. He looked ready to kill something.

Ciel met his shuttered gaze, offering him a grim smile. Nodding subtly in return, grim determination settled into the staunch angle of his jaw. Turning her face to bring her lips close to her captor’s, she reached back with a hand, searching to see if he had a proper sword on his hip.

When the dagger returned to press against her pulse point, she purred, “Would you believe me when I say that I am just full of surprises?”

The pressure lessened and a hand cupped her ribcage, a thumb just skimming the underside of her breast, “Oh, I’ll bet.”

Meeting Kurt’s eyes, she reached for the well of magic that flowed through her. It burst from her in an explosive rush of magic and air, sending everyone but Kurt, who had braced for the assault, and the man who had been holding her to the ground.

“You little bitch!”

She spun to face the latter, smiling as she froze him in place with a very strong stasis field.

“I’ll be taking that,” Ciel purred, sliding the short sword from his belt and tossing it deftly to Kurt as the rest of the men scrambled to their feet.

For the boss, it was fast enough and Kurt drove the end of his sword straight through the flesh of his thigh, all but skewering him to the street with all his pent-up fury. Howling and writhing like a stuck pig, the man clawed at his pierced and bleeding limb.

The others were advancing slowly on Kurt, much warier now that he had a weapon in his hand.

Pulling the blade free, Kurt left the boss to bleed out on the street. It wouldn’t be long for him; the blood was spewing forth in pulsing torrents. She’d have to leave most of the fighting to Kurt, her skirts were simply not fit for combat. It would be foolish and dangerous for her to get into the middle of it.

But she could deal with the outlier.

Turning back to the man frozen in place, she rested a gentle hand on his sternum, “You messed with the wrong ‘pretty lady’, I’m afraid.”

Magic pooled quickly behind her palm, buzzing and warm and familiar. When it became too much to hold any longer, she let it burst from her palm. It burrowed through him, eating away at his flesh like acid. That he managed to squeal even with a paralysed body was new to her and it stopped abruptly when her magic reached his heart. Crumpling like a sack of hay, wisps of smoky magic curled out of the charred hole in his chest.

It had not been a good or clean death for him but she couldn’t dwell on that now.

The clash and ring of metal upon metal was a chorus of death behind her and she turned to watch as Kurt skillfully fended off and parried three men at once. He was all skill and grace, his movements pure and lethal as he lunged and retreated, as he spun and ducked. She probably shouldn’t have thought him beautiful, not then, but she did.

That was probably why she saw the shadow out of the corner of her eye a moment too late. With an open hand, she managed to bat away the blow that was meant for her abdomen, though it sliced cleanly through her coat and the first layer of her dress.

White-hot pain lanced through her palm and she darted off to the side, only to be hampered by her mounds of petticoats.

Her assailant lunged once more, dagger aimed at her face. Without thinking she sent out another wave of magic, stronger than she meant and utterly uncontrolled. The crunch of bone hitting solid wall was a horrid refrain in her ears. But she didn’t think about that, just the click of her heels as she ran to the crumpled heap of man and picked up the dagger still clutched loosely in his fingers.

There were two of them still fighting Kurt, who was breathing heavily around his gritted teeth. He was good but no one could keep multiple foes at bay forever, he would tire eventually and make a mistake. A mistake that could easily prove fatal.

“Oi!” Ciel cried shrilly.

Her distraction worked and one of the two men turned on her with a growl, a bruise already forming along the weak line of his jaw. Snapping her hand back, she threw the dagger at him with all the strength she could muster. Not enough. It flew low and pierced his shoulder, close to his collarbone. Not enough to do anything but slow him, he pulled it free with a sneer.

It clattered on the ground.

“You’ll pay for that,” he snarled, spittle flying from his swollen lip.

Ciel panicked when her back hit the wall, feeling a quick hand wrap around her throat. Blinking and fighting, she clawed at the sword in his hand, wishing she hadn’t thrown the dagger. Her magic was slow and weak. Before his fingers could clamp down fully, a jagged shudder rumbled through him, followed by a wet gurgle. She pulled the sword free from his grip but it dangled uselessly between them. Blood and spit coated his lips, foaming and slipping down his chin.

Another sharp jerk upward and his blood and spittle splattered across her cheek.

She blinked.

Kurt wrenched his sword free and the man slumped to the ground between them. Panting hard, he dropped the sword on top of the body.

Ciel followed suit, pulling in a fresh lungful of air, “I hope that’ll be a message to you, Candy Cane.”

Suddenly she was pushed back against the wall and Kurt was everywhere at once, his hands quick and efficient as they patted her down and checked her for injury. Ciel stood still, shaky with adrenaline, and let him work. It would only take longer and make him fuss all the harder if she hampered him. A hiss slid through her gritted teeth when his fingers grazed her palm.

When he pulled his hand away, her blood glistened on his fingertips, “Ciel…”

“I’m okay,” she reassured him in a tender murmur. Reaching up, she let her thumb graze the slice in his chin. His quivering breath raced over her skin, lighting her up. “I’m _okay_. I promise.”

Warm rough hands cupped her neck, his thumbs resting along her jawbone as he angled her face up towards him, “You’re sure?”

“Yes. Just a little tired after using so much magic, mostly,” she sighed, losing the fight to not turn her face into one of his hands.

Whatever he said next was spoken into her hair, his breath burning a path along her scalp as his mouth moved against her. He held her loosely like he was scared she would break or disappear. When he pulled back, she swore his lips grazed her temple in some semblance of a kiss.

Stepping back, he looked over her once more and winced.

Looking down at herself she frowned. His coat was ruined, torn and bloodstained.

“I’m sorry, I got blood on your overcoat.”

Kurt barked a rusty laugh through the hands that were scrubbing over his face, “Don’t worry about it, Green Blood. I can get another.”

“Oh, is that what you spend your hard-earned gold on? Closets full of fancy coats you rarely wear?” Ciel teased half-heartedly, shoving her hands into her pockets. Her fingers went immediately to the leather strip. “And here I thought it would be the usual fare of drink and whores.”

Kurt snorted and reached for her uninjured hand, pulling it from her pocket and leading her away from the dead bodies and home, “That’s only on high holidays.”

They picked their way through the blood and bodies, his hand firmly around hers. He would have to inform the Coin Guard about the altercation and someone would need to take care of the bodies…

“Nothing says Saturnalia quite like some debauchery down by your local coin tavern.”

“I wouldn’t remember,” Kurt admitted with a long look, before turning to look at the lights in her windows with something like disappointment. Or regret. “It’s been a long time since I spent it anywhere but the palace.”

And she knew just how lonely such a post had been for him. Never belonging completely to her family or their staff but being elevated enough in the Guard for it to isolate him there too. The best company that he had been offered was Constantin and her in their worst years, pumped full of teenage hormones and the moodiness to match.

No wonder he saw them as little more than children.

“Ah, yes. Good old palace festivities,” Ciel scoffed, trying not to dwell on all of the things that they might have cost him: camaraderie, a higher position in the guard, maybe even a family. “Awkward family time and veiled insults for everyone.”

“Sometimes,” he laughed, “but not always. Your mother wasn’t like that.”

No, she wasn’t. The Princess De Sardet was a good and kind woman, or so Ciel had thought. Now she wasn’t so sure. Had it been true kindness or ambition that had spurred her to take on the child of another, to raise as her own?

Ciel reached for the necklace at her throat, her fingers lingering on the lines scraped into the flattened stone. The token was a great deal like the jewellery that the natives wore.

Could it be true? Could she be a child of the island?

The necklace certainly suggested so.

Why would the Princess have kept the token if she wanted to completely hide the truth? Did Ciel really want an answer to that? To any of her questions?

What if Constantin no longer cared for her when she told him? What if…

Ciel forced her thoughts to a halt, slowing until she dangled at the end of Kurt’s arm.

She looked at him through half-shuttered lashes, the back of his broad shoulders silhouetted against the warm glow of the fire from her downstairs. Small and aching, she said, “She’s not my mother.”

Ciel pulled her fingers from his.

He stilled and turned slowly, his face cast in deep shadow. Still, his pale eyes, her favourite eyes in all the world she thought, glittered in abject apology, “Green Blood…”

How could he be so cold and avoidant one moment and sound like that the next? Like his heart was breaking for her, like he wanted to shield her from all the bad in the world. How on earth could she respect his wishes when he made it so very difficult?

Still, confusion and suspicion crowed in her breast, daring her to ask the question that seemed pinned to the end of her tongue. She had to hear it from his mouth, that he didn’t know. She couldn’t trust herself to see a concealed truth anymore, not even with him.

“You did not-” her face crumbled and she shivered, trying to find the will to voice the words, “You did not know…did you? Tell me you did not.”

He recoiled like she had slapped him, sucking in a deep, dry breath through his nose. His visage shifted in the shadows, concealed and murky but even so she swore she saw hurt and confusion on it.

It was but a moment before his face was shuttered, closed and professional, his voice cold and polite, “Do you honestly think I could have kept that from you, Ciel?”

The sincerity of his sentiment sliced at her as surely as the knife that left the throbbing mark on her palm.

“No, I suppose not,” she granted him, pushing past him. Her lids flickered and clenched as her shoulder rubbed against his.

He didn’t speak again until her foot was on the first stair, good hand gripping the railing, “Ciel?”

The breath in her chest came in shallow puffs as she eyed the door to her apartment, “Yes?”

“You’ve never been a nobody. Never,” he said, his back was still towards her but his voice was clear, “Everything that your title of Legate De Sardet is? That’s yours and yours alone. It would never have flourished without you behind it, shaping it, moulding it. And you’ve never been anything less than _extraordinary_.” 

Hand gripping the railing so hard that her fingers ached, she blinked and blinked. Warmth flooded her at his sincere praise, his words a spark that set her aflame. It was so hot it burned cold and the emotions that cascaded over her left her quaking once more.

It was simply_ too much_.

A sob escaped her mouth before she could clamp it behind a hand.

Alarmed Kurt whipped around to face her, held in place by her gesture, a desperate plea that begged him not to come any closer.

“You’re quite unfair, you know,” Ciel’s voice was more ragged than a beggar’s clothes, sore and shaking, “You don’t want me and yet you say things like that?”

Kurt flinched.

Ciel couldn’t help but snicker mirthlessly under her breath at her foolishness, “How am I ever supposed to stop loving you, Kurt, when you keep giving me hope?”

Unable to look at him anymore she pushed open the door to her home, hot air blasting her in the face. Closing the door and leaving him out there was so, so difficult but she somehow managed it, for a small miracle.

All of her other companions were crowded around a low, circular table with several bottles of rum at its middle, their skin flushed and dewy. Their hats and jackets were discarded haphazardly around the room and they were all quick and clumsy to offer her their smiles and greeting.

Vasco was the first to notice the state she was in.

His eyes narrowed as they roved over her face, “What happened to you, De Sardet?”

“Nothing Kurt and I could not handle. No need to worry yourself.”

Siora and Aphra offered her worried glances but nodded in acceptance, turning back to the cards in their hands. Vasco sighed, folding his hand and stood.

“That hand doesn’t look like nothing. Let’s get you cleaned up, Your Excellency…Kurt will have my head otherwise.”

How unfair was it that the very name of the man she loved was like a dagger to her heart?


	5. Chapter 5

That the air had tasted of Teer Fradee’s ancient magic, like dirt coating his entire mouth, should have been warning enough to stay away from the area. The lines of spears, twisted earthen things with points the length of his forearm? Those should have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The masked creature was ferocious and huge, bipedal and uncomfortably human-looking. Even the clawed feet, so like an eagle’s, were fleshy and grotesque. It was only the gargantuan antlers that sprouted from the skull atop its face that threw off the shape of human, turning it into something monstrous. Like something out of a fever dream, a hallucinogenic nightmare.

The Nadaig was strong, too strong, maybe. It felt like they had been fighting for hours. Kurt’s muscles burned from the effort of holding his sword in a perpetual defensive position.

The Guardian bellowed and swiped at De Sardet once more with a hand easily the size of her entire torso. With light steps, she danced out of its reach, darting to and fro as she stabbed at its long limbs with the point of her rapier. It was no good though, her weapon was ill-suited to take on such a creature. It was like trying to poke holes in a tree.

Whilst it was distracted, Kurt lunged and brought down his own heavier blade to slice through the creature’s flank. It was a good strike, solid and true, and on anything human, he would have cleaved away flesh to expose the bones of its pelvic cradle. But this thing was anything but human. Despite a flesh-like appearance from a distance, it seemed to be made up of something else entirely – like the petrified grass he’d seen in some museum on the continent.

Whatever it was, it held his blade firm.

Screeching, the Nadaig swung around with a speed it should have been denied by its size, catching Kurt with a blow straight to the sternum. He wasn’t sure which winded him more: the blow or landing on the hard ground several feet away.

He’d be surprised if he got out of this with all of his ribs intact.

“Kurt!” De Sardet cried, voice coloured with panic.

He lifted his weighty head in time to see her freeze the Nadaig mid-step, mouth open in a roar as it coiled in preparation to crush him beneath its avian claws.

Rolling to his feet with a speed his clanging head protested, Kurt yanked his sword free, bracing a foot on the Nadaig’s thigh. The sound of splintering and creaking came from deep within its body as though it came from inside a cave. It was struggling against the magic.

It tore itself free from the stasis, pieces of its flesh falling free to litter the ground around its feet, and threw back its head and _roared_. The ground below Kurt’s boots seemed to rumble and shift in harmony as he ran out of range.

Lowering its head, it observed them through the holes in its skull mask. Its eyes were dark in their entirety and glittered with an animal menace that was unsettling when paired with an intelligence that could only be described as human. Its gaze flicked between De Sardet and Aphra before slowly turning to focus on Kurt.

He felt that gaze down to the very depths of his soul.

Tentatively it lowered itself, crouching on its digitigrade legs as it touched a massive hand to the ground. Everything under them shook once more.

Kurt drew in a breath and held it for a long moment. He then released it in a narrow, calming stream. Heartbeat slowing, his focus sharpened and he brought his sword up across his body once more. 

Pulling its hand away from the ground, the Nadaig drew forth a solid sliver of earth. Fashioned from the same compacted matter as its twisted flesh, it was shaped into one of the spears that had lined the path to its nest.

The Nadaig stood, pulling up fully into its massive stature, and levelled the spear at Kurt.

“No!”

Something, De Sardet’s cry perhaps, seemed to ripple through its stone-like tissue and before any of them could move it was hurling the spear in her direction. It seemed to sing as it pierced the air, a terrible wail of war designed to fill them with fear.

It worked.

De Sardet brought her arms across her torso a fraction of a second before the spear reached her. It smashed against her shadowy shield with a deafening crack. Both weapon and safeguard shattered like glass. The latter wrapped itself around her falling body in wisps of black smoke.

Kurt was already half-way towards her before her shoulders touched the grass.

Gunshots popped in time with his steps, ringing around the clearing. Aphra’s cursing, always in her native tongue, was fast, frustrated, and amplified by the dark mouth of the cave at her back.

The shrill sizzle and shatter of an explosive pot were louder than all of those still.

Without stopping, Kurt swooped down and grabbed De Sardet under the arm. He wasn’t gentle as he dragged her away from the advancing Nadaig but she managed to get her feet under herself somehow.

One day, if they lived to see it, they’d laugh about that stupid half-crab run.

“Kurt, watch-”

The abrupt impact of the guardian with the ground just shy of them was enough to send them both sprawling. Kurt could taste grass and dirt, could feel the scrape of earth and stone across his cheek and nose when he turned his head to search for his sword.

It wasn’t far away, lying on the grass to his right. It wouldn’t take much to-

The Nadaig growled deep in its throat and it sounded like rock scraping on rock.

The coolness of a shadow slid across his back and shoulders as the creature loomed over them. Kurt was slowly reaching for the sword when small fingers gripped his other hand. Hot, wet breath caressed the back of his neck and the overly sweet smell of moist grass filled his nose. It might have been pleasant if death were not perched atop them, staring down at them through the hollows of its decorative skull.

Large claws pierced deep into the dirt around Kurt’s sword. A growl, more stone on stone, settled between his shoulder blades. Ignoring all of that, he dragged the grip of his sword towards him with flailing, grasping fingertips.

The Nadaig snorted, and the grass scent grew thicker, a moment before it reared.

Grabbing his sword fully, Kurt rolled towards De Sardet. They both grunted. Half-covering her with his weight, he positioned his sword point skyward as he brought his legs up. Pain exploded behind his kneecaps and ankles when the beast dove down at them, mouth open and dripping. Sharp predator’s teeth hidden behind some herbivore’s bite. Kurt pushed against its abdomen, grateful that his shins didn’t snap. Whistling and screeching, his sword slid into the flesh near its collarbone.

His muscles were shaking and cramping, promising to give out under the tremendous weight. Gritting his teeth, he ignored the feeling of De Sardet wriggling and pushed harder. The Nadaig did not move. Kurt wasn’t prepared for De Sardet to reach around his shoulder and lay a hand atop his.

Magic, warm and foreign, flowed through his flesh. It raced through his muscles, sinking into the tendons and ligaments of his shaking hand. For a moment, even the leather grip of his sword burned and vibrated in his palm.

The Nadaig snorted and shuddered. Pieces of petrified, stony _whatever it was _began to break away from the wound and flake across Kurt’s clenched face. The vibration of her magic grew hotter and it was quickly becoming unbearable to hold the sword. His entire body was shaking with the effort.

“Just a little more,” De Sardet gasped in his ear.

“You’ve got about five sec-”

How his sword didn’t shatter from the ungodly amount of magic she forced through it and into the Nadaig was unbelievable. Incredible.

It blasted a hole straight through the middle of the creature, forcing it off and away in a fury of flailing, desperate limbs. The sound it made as it clawed at itself, trying to dig out the remnants of the magic was horrifying. Something he would never, _ever_ forget. Ripped from its inhuman throat, it had Kurt wishing to tear off his ears.

Three more gunshots rang out. Each making the Nadaig jerk and startle as they pierced its flesh.

Aphra kept her flintlock level with it as she cautiously edged her way towards them. Without looking away from the shuddering Nadaig, she offered De Sardet a hand and pulled her to her feet.

It was panting now, every exhale a deep, trembling howl that Kurt could feel in his sternum, in the ground below him. It felt like the earth was breathing in sync with it.

“How is it still alive?” Aphra snapped, groping at her belt with a free hand.

Kurt let De Sardet help him to his feet, dismayed to find that his legs felt like jelly.

“I have…no…idea,” De Sardet was quivering hard, her face deathly pale, “but I don’t think I have another one of those in me.”

The Nadaig stumbled towards them, claws reaching and swiping. With a look, they spread out wide, far out of reach of its fumbling swings. It stopped with a huff, looking at each of them in turn. When it reached to pull another spear free from the flesh of the earth, Aphra threw her phial.

It smashed across its shoulder and ignited. Chunks of burning matter dropped from its form and the grass under its feet started to smoulder. It took barely any time at all before flames were licking at its legs. 

“Oh, please no,” Aphra breathed and they all watched as the creature barely reacted to the fire that was building around it.

The spear that it tore free was longer, thicker than any that had come before it.

“Good gods,” De Sardet muttered before spinning and running towards her rapier. Her shield flickered at her back, weak and transparent.

The Nadaig watched her go but didn’t move. For a moment everything seemed to fall still and a red lead drifted in front of Kurt’s face.

Then everything cracked and shifted.

The great beast leapt towards De Sardet. It was only when it landed too far away from her to be anything but purposeful that Kurt saw its deception.

And by then it was already too late.

It swung around. Towards him.

The spear pierced Kurt’s abdomen.

“Kurt!”

He looked down at the thing sticking out of him. Could that truly be him? The sword slipped from his grip. His hand was slow, syrupy, as it wrapped around the spear. His mind, cloudy, foggy, and slow was surprised to find it solid. But he could barely feel it…

Kurt knew that such a reprieve wouldn’t last long. It never did. The burning pain, the fear of death, would come soon enough.

The Nadaig was standing before him a breath later, curling over the top of him with its great height, blowing its sweet breath on his head.

It took a moment for him to tear his eyes skyward, to look death in the face.

There was a sharp, burning jerk at his middle. Grotesque and wet, his flesh slid down the earthen spear as it was pulled free of him. Blood poured over his grasping hand, quick and warm. The Nadaig huffed in pleasure when it reclaimed its trophy, hefting it skyward. It gave him one last, sly look of exasperation before it raked its claws across his torso.

Kurt never felt the ground rush up to meet his head because the dark had already claimed him.

It eventually became clear that it wasn’t absolute darkness. It was more like smog, thick and greasy as it ebbed and flowed around him. Smoky and shifting, like the shadows in his mind.

Was this death?

If it was, what was he supposed to do with it?

There seemed to be a…breeze? Some of the murk cleared around him.

“No no no no no,” he could feel something touch his cheek. Distantly, like his skin was somehow numb. It was also unbearably warm, or maybe he was just so cold. He couldn’t tell. “Please _no_.”

She was okay? It was dead? Must have been…

He struggled to sift through the dark, trying desperately to make his tongue move. It was heavy and uncooperative. As his mind began to clear, the pain rolled in and everything everywhere started to throb viciously, “M’kay, Green Blood.”

As if she couldn’t see that he was anything but. He could feel heat and damp seep from him. Sliding and curving over his skin, soaking through his armour. The air was saturated with the scent of iron and salt. None of that was important, not in the face of comforting her. He wanted to reach for her but it wasn't to be. He could barely swallow for the pain.

“Shh,” she whispered, voice husky. “Try not to move, okay?”

The warmth on his cheek disappeared. What had been scalding only a moment before was sorely missed as soon as it was gone. So _cold_.

Was this really how he was going to die?

Probably.

Not very heroic, perhaps, but what had he been hoping for? He’d never thought he’d die in bed of old age and coin guard work was rarely awe-inspiring. After spending years clinging stubbornly to life by sheer force of will as others tried to beat, coerce, or torture him into the grave, he’d been reluctant to consider the end.

And here it was, knocking at his door.

White-hot pain burst behind his eyes as he became aware of the pressure on his stomach. It seemed to grow heavier with each passing moment. Trying to push him into the earth all the faster.

“We need to get him back to camp. There’s nothing we can do for him here.”

“The chances that we could move him, even between the two of us…” Aphra’s voice was soft, muddled and to the right of him. Across from De Sardet. “We need the others.”

“Do you think we have time for that?” De Sardet snapped, and the pressure on his stomach shifted. He would have screamed if he could have but, as it was, he could only groan behind his teeth.

“De Sardet!” Aphra hissed back at her, chastising De Sardet in her fiercest schoolmarm voice. “If you do not control yourself, he will die.”

“If not the camp then what-Vignámri is closer,” De Sardet murmured and something brushed his brow.

Aphra sounded as sorry as he had ever heard her, “He will bleed out before we get him there…”

There were few options, and fewer _good_ ones still. But there was one option…

“Green Blood…” Kurt rasped and fingers wrapped around his fumbling hand. “You need to- to…do it.”

He heard the fear in her voice, the panic, “You know I _can’t_.”

For a moment they were back in her uncle’s palace and she was clutching the remains of a rat between her shaking hands. Tears ran in pale tracks down her childishly plump cheeks as Petrus’ tried to comfort her with words of The Enlightened. It had done no good, she had been inconsolable.

‘I killed it’ she sobbed, body wracked with grief as Kurt looked down at her, Constantin standing beside him with a disgusted sneer on his face.

That had been her first and last attempt at healing.

“No choice,” he continued, trying to squeeze her fingertips. “Trust you…”

“Do what?” Aphra asked, curiosity masking her concern. She never did like to be the last one to know something. “What is he talking about?”

The warmth around his hand withdrew and the darkness pressed in once more. He heard De Sardet suck in a breath, could picture her reaching to wring her fingers in worry. He could also picture her tilt her chin up too, her face turning impassive and stalwart.

“Aphra, I need you to go collect a handful of small white flowers, they smell like liquorice.”

“Why?” Damnable curiosity. It was going to kill _him_.

“Now.”

Aphra’s footsteps were soft but fast on the grass as she did as she was told.

“Are you sure?” De Sardet asked him, fingers trailing his jaw. They quivered.

He could hear the fear in her voice and it was enough for him to pry open his eyes a crack. She swam in and out of focus, but he could see that she was paler than normal with only two spots of fear staining her cheeks. Dishevelled and perfect, if she was the last thing that he ever saw he wouldn’t complain.

It wasn’t too long before he had to shut his eyes again. The ache in his head was phenomenal and only got worse when she lifted it, something soft sliding underneath. The scent of honeysuckle washed over him and he breathed deeply. Her coat, maybe?

“Trust you,” he rasped again, only just realising how true that was.

He trusted her, with his life…with his everything. Such a poignant realisation would normally have filled him with the urge to flee, to escape. To get as far away from her as he could and rebuild whatever wall it was that she had torn down, leaving it in rubble around him. But…he was dying. What good was fear to him now? Hermann would not have his last moments if that’s what they were to be. So, he would trust her, with everything he was. Whatever that might mean.

It probably meant that he lov-

“Okay. Okay, I can do this,” she whispered to herself in the fervent tones of a prayer.

The pressure on his abdomen eased for a moment only to be replaced by the scalding heat of her bare skin.

A groan tore at his throat and he tried to squirm away from her.

“Shh,” her other hand pushed the hair away from his forehead. “I’m sorry…but this is going to get worse before it gets better.”

He didn’t have time to appreciate her blunt honesty before the pain started. It was dull, smothering and slow to build, like sitting in a pool of water that was slowly being boiled. But sure enough, the heat on his stomach seemed to worsen until he swore that he could feel his skin _burn_, the edges of his wound curling and crisping as she poured her magic into him. He could feel it just below his skin, plucking and pulling at the fabric of his very existence with unsure fingers.

Magic was a marvel, a gift, but the body was not made to be manipulated in such a fashion. He’d been healed by a priest on several occasions and it was never pleasant but this…

Dying might have been preferable.

His skin pulled and he cried out hoarsely, his fingers and heels pawing at the dirt below him.

At this rate, she might actually kill him.

His body twisted of its own accord, his teeth gritted so hard they were in danger of snapping and crumbling to dust in his mouth. The magic even cut through the darkness until he could visualise it. It was molten, golden and it ate away at him – seemingly wanting to burn everything in its path. It boiled and bubbled, forever threatening to burst free and consume him. Only her tenuous control kept it leashed and channelled, pouring it through him.

But under the pain, he could feel something…something equally as warm but oddly soothing? The scent of honeysuckle and warm rain rushed over him and the pain ebbed. The feeling of his flesh knitting together turning to only an uncomfortable niggle as he focused on it.

It was her.

He could feel _her_. Could feel her fear and her worry as if it were his own, could taste the magic sitting on her tongue – sweet and staticky. The oddest thing was that he could feel his own body via her perception, could see his wounds through her eyes. He could feel the beat of his heart twice over, slow but still strong as it rang all around him. She grunted and he felt it in his throat, felt her move the magic as if he did it himself. The overload of awareness from so many sources was dizzying and more than a little nauseating.

His stomach heaved.

Kurt groaned a low, hoarse sound that was ripped from his chest, and he felt her come closer somehow. Her mind slid over his, encompassing him. All the hurt disappeared as she did so. There was only…Love, so much love. So much that it might drown him. How could anyone love him like that? All the hurt and loneliness he had wrought in his life began to melt away under the feeling…

With a pitchy, broken gasp, she pulled her hand away from him and he was all alone again.

His body felt like it had been pushed over a large cliff and made to hit every outcrop on the way down…but he didn’t feel his lifeblood seeping out of him anymore. Darkness pressed in on him.

_Not yet_, he struggled and reached for strength. 

“Y’did good,” Kurt mewled like a new-born kitten. Words were a struggle as if she had wiped his mind clean and he barely knew how to speak anymore. “Knew y’could. Always knew…had it…you.”

The inky waves of oblivion swept over him and carried him off into the darkness once more.

Kurt had no idea how long he stayed there. It could have been minutes, hours, or years even. Every so often he would feel the murk around him shift and pitch, sending his mind spiralling. Often his stomach would chase after it, twisting and eager, though nothing seemed to come from it. Voices too would drift by on the smoke, slipping through his fingers as he reached for them.

The blackness pulsed and rumbled. It smelled suddenly like woodsmoke and a sharp, medicinal tang that had him wanting to scrape his tongue clean. The darkness seemed to burn at the edges, still black. Could a flame burn black? He wasn’t sure, he was no scientist. But it felt like Ciel…It also felt like him. Like when she had healed him a piece of her had flaked free to be his forever.

How would he ever be able to forget how it felt to have her right there with him, to feel the slide of her mind on his own? To be almost one person? More importantly, how could he ever look at her again knowing the depth of her feelings? To live with the guilt of how easily he had dismissed her, all because of her youth and status.

Slowly the blackness turned to slate and a voice, more tangible than its predecessors, oozed in through the cracks.

“Companion…grievous indeed,” a male voice. Native from the accent.

So, he had made to Vignámri then.

“Will…recover?” De Sardet. Tired, sad.

He had to go to her.

Forcing himself closer to the voices, Kurt strained until he melted into something close to full consciousness. He almost wished he hadn’t. It had been a long time since he had felt pain like this…a long time. But not long enough. He’d hoped never to experience it again. The scars that littered his body, old and hard-won, throbbed in sympathy.

Trying to take a deep breath, he winced. The bandages that they had bound him with felt as close as his own skin and twice as restrictive. The material, though soft in reality, chafed him raw.

Everything hurt, right down to his nail beds.

Fuck it all, even his stubble ached.

“If his strength proves enough then perhaps,” same voice again.

They still sounded fuzzy but they were no longer phasing in and out.

“Thank you, Ullan. Your help is greatly appreciated.”

“You are carants to us, we could do no less for you and yours,” Ullan offered, though they would pay for the kindness later, he had no doubt. “You should rest as well; your spirit is heavy.”

“I will bear your advice in mind,” De Sardet said in that way that meant she had no intention of doing any such thing. “Thank you again.”

There was a rustle and the door to wherever they were whispered shut.

A sigh, soft and pained filled the space. De Sardet moved after a moment and her shadow passed across his face in the dim light of the hut. There was a fire somewhere, he could smell it. Faint warm stained the left side of his body.

De Sardet kneeled at his side.

“Oh, Kurt,” she breathed, fingers gently running through the hair at his temple. Kurt could smell smoke and aged iron on her skin. “It is strange to see you like this, laid up and pale. I do not recall a time that I’ve ever seen you injured.”

He kept his eyes closed because he wasn’t sure what he would say to her after…everything. As it was, he wasn’t sure he _could_ open them anyway.

She continued, her voice a whisper in the darkness, “Would I sound childish to you if I were to say that it scares me half to death? I have always thought you invincible, untouchable. Our protector and champion. To see you like this…I feel so very helpless.”

The fingers that absently stroked him retreated for a moment as she repositioned herself. The solid weight of her knee pressed against his shoulder, the warm leather soft on his bare skin.

Helpless? How could she think that? He would surely be dead if it wasn’t for her. If she had not been willing to face her fears and use her magic to heal him.

“Save Constantin I do not know anyone else who is so full of life,” the fingers came back and tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ear. The heel of her palm brushed the corner of his mouth.

If he had been able to, he would have scoffed. Full of life? Him? Some days he felt like he was barely holding on. Surviving but never thriving. If he seemed that way to her it was only because she was around.

“I wonder if it would pain you to hear me compare you so. After all, Constantin can be so very…_trying_,” she sighed before softly laughing through her nose, “but he’s ours, is he not? Our loud and flamboyant governor. Our burden and our reason to go on.”

That he was. Kurt didn’t often show it but he was fond of the boy. It was hard not to be, he had spent almost all of his adult life protecting Constantin, shaping him as best he could around his father’s overbearing nature, his all-encompassing reach. It was said that some men were made at court, others in the training yard. Kurt just hoped that enough of Constantin had been made in the latter. He had certainly seen the makings of it that terrible day in the throne room, even already sick as he was.

It would not have been easy to gun him down even without the woman by his side, looking at Kurt with such easy warmth…

“He’s just so…so Constantin. Like some delicate wildflower that basks under the sun, that cannot help but draw so much life to it. Or perhaps he is the sun itself, golden of visage and brilliant enough to _burn_,” he heard the gentle scrape of skin on skin as she wiped at her face, her voice beginning to wobble. “But you…you’re a little different. Nothing so ostentatious as the sun, you’ll be pleased to know.”

She laughed to herself again and then sniffled.

“You know the pools just below a waterfall, the kind that has been shaped by the flowing water?” She asked him and waited, sighing when he didn’t answer. How could he dare? He had never heard her so open, so _vulnerable_. “That’s you. You’ve been shaped by a hard life Kurt and yet…there, in your depths, far below the stillness of the surface, there is life. Though you may try to hide it beneath your ‘cold-hearted mercenary’ façade.”

A persona that had cracked a little more with every year he had spent with the two of them. Every year they had grown a little older and wiser and he didn’t feel so old and estranged from the pair. It wasn’t until the passage to Teer Fradee that their relationship had truly begun to blur and melt into something like friendship.

There was one afternoon where he had been laying on the foot of Constantin’s bed in a half-melted heap, listening as the boy had grilled him about…something. De Sardet, white with persistent sea-sickness had stumbled in wearing nothing but a shirt and her breeches, hair a wild halo around her head. Without so much as a word she had fallen beside Kurt and burrowed into his side, begging them to make the world stop moving. Dropping his book, Constantin had taken up her other side, stroking her hair with a painfully fond smile.

They had spent the afternoon in a warm haze, listening as Constantin told them outlandish stories of Teer Fradee until they had fallen asleep in a huddle – Constantin’s fingers in De Sardet’s hair, her hand in Kurt’s.

“I have no idea what I would have done if the coup had…gone the other way. If we had been on opposing sides,” he did. Kurt knew he wouldn’t have been able to beat her, she had long surpassed him in skill and arsenal. Even if he had followed his orders, his guilt would never have allowed him to win. “I think I would have let you strike me down, in truth, because I could have never done that to you. Not- not even for Constantin.”

His heart stuttered in his chest at the idea of a world without her.

“Oh, listen to me. Waxing poetic and babbling on like a fool,” she sniffed and he peeked through his lashes to watch her wrap her arms around her knees, setting her chin on top. “Even if you could hear me, I doubt that you would care to listen to that.”

How often they all relied on her and she shouldered their burdens with a smile and an assurance that she would help however she could. Who was there for her? Who listened to her woes when she was feeling like this? They all _would_, of that he had no doubt, but he also knew that she would never ask them to.

Her next words filled him with shame.

“I know you all think that I am strong but the truth is that I’m not. I’m so afraid. Afraid that Constantin is sicker than he will tell me, that you and I will never recover from my impulsive bout of foolishness. I worry that I will fail my mot- the Princess and that I will never find a cure for the malichor. That she might have perished all alone for _nothing_.”

Voice cracking, she let out a sob. A single dry sob into the leather over her knee.

He wanted to sit, to fold her into his arms and let her talk and talk but he knew that she would only clam up, shove her feelings back down and lock them away as though they never existed. He wanted it so much that it was a knot in his stomach. How cruel was it that the only way he could be there for her was to feign sleep, or let her run rings around him in a spar? They had to do better by her, find some way to ease her burdens before she broke. Especially if Constantin was as ill as he feared…

“You and Constantin…Gods, if you both aren’t the linchpins that hold me together…for what person can thrive without sun or water?” She sniffed again and he almost wondered if she could hear his thoughts, her words ran so parallel to them. “So silly.”

Never that, he wanted to tell her. There was so much he wanted to say. 

“Without you both, I would have fallen apart years ago or, if not that, from all the terrible truths that have come to light since we came here,” and yet they hadn’t done enough for her, any of them. Not truly. Lesser men and women would have snapped under the pressure long ago. “I’m…weak without you, Kurt. I do not think I could do this without you both.”

Another sob.

It damn near broke his heart that she thought so little of herself, of her strength. 

There was a rustle and a shadow as she moved. He nearly startled when he felt her palm on his cheek, warm and soft.

“Please don’t leave me,” she whispered, something warm and wet splashing in small drops across his skin. “I’m _begging_ you.”

His fingers twitched by his side, burning with the need to comfort her.

“I promise you that I will be better, that I will respect your wishes and boundaries. I will give up that false hope and move past you, I swear it. If you’ll just pull through this,” she pressed her forehead to his jaw, whispering ardently into the shadows around his collarbone. “I’ll be better…just don’t leave me. _Please._”

He was reaching for her when the door to the hut squeaked open and she sprung away from him, from his searching fingers.

“De Sardet?” Vasco’s voice was closer than he would have thought, his damn near silent footsteps carrying him quickly across the room.

“Yes?” She asked coolly, though he could hear the rustle of her sleeves as she rubbed at her face.

How often did she hide from them like that?

“Siora is looking for you,” the voice got closer once more. Crouching maybe? The sailor sounded troubled.

“Tell he-”

“Go take some air, Lass. You’ve been cooped up in here for too long,” Vasco said it softly but there was no doubting the shard of steel in the command. “I’ll keep an eye on your mercenary.”

“I-” De Sardet finger’s grazed Kurt’s before she sighed and the wan heat retreated. “Thank you, I will do that.”

“Here, take this. Can’t have you falling over because you’ve been neglecting yourself.”

“You remembered.” Surprise. Pleasure.

That irritated him about as much as his wrappings.

“Would that I could forget, De Sardet. The scent of candy canes haunts my dreams,” Vasco chuckled, rustling about as he got comfortable in the spot she had just occupied. Kurt could feel the leather of his jacket by his arm. “Now, off with you.”

When the door shut, Vasco hummed and nudged Kurt’s shoulder.

“You can stop pretending you’re asleep, laddie,” he could hear the smirk in Vasco’s voice, the surety.

No point hiding it.

Kurt wrenched his eyes open with a grimace, pale blue meeting green, “Your eyes…are as sharp as a damned crow’s.”

Mouth feeling as dry and dusty as the grave, Kurt scowled at his own heavy and clumsy tongue. And the feeling was only half as bad as the _taste_.

“Aye, I see much. That’s true,” Vasco nodded deliberately, words heavy with meaning as he pulled off his tricorne, running his fingers through the mousey strands beneath. “But so do you when you’re not choosing to ignore the truth.”

What was that _supposed_ to mean?

“I don’t have the energy for your riddles, Sailor,” Kurt grunted, trying to prop himself up, wincing when Vasco’s hand gripped his shoulder to help. The wall of the hut was cool and rough against his back but he didn’t mind. “You may not have noticed but I nearly kicked the bucket today.”

Vasco looked at him sidelong, his brow twitching.

“I suppose I should be grateful you’re bedbound otherwise I’d never be able to pin you down,” Vasco said, pulling out an old flask and offering it to him with a generous dip of his head. “And it was three days ago.”

Three days? He’d been out that long? He hadn’t been unconscious for that length of time since-

“Thanks,” Kurt said, taking the flask and downing a quick swig without thought. It burned all the way to his stomach, burning up some of the darker memories that lingered in his mind. He handed it back to Vasco with a swallow, “Gods that’s awful.”

Still better than the taste of dirt, though.

“I’d tell you it’d put hair on your chest but I think it’s too late for you in that regard.”

“Says the man who can barely grow a moustache.”

“And cover this handsome mug? Perish the thought,” Vasco quipped as he wiped a stray drop of the moonshine away, screwing the cap back on. “I’ll leave the stylish facial hair to Petrus.”

They lapsed into a heavy silence, Vasco watching him with a calculating amusement that made Kurt want to squirm. He didn’t, but he wanted to. Instead, he scowled as darkly as he could. 

“What do you want, Vasco?” Kurt finally asked when it became clear that the sailor was content to sit and watch him. He couldn’t help but feel the wily sailor was baiting him, though for what reason he couldn’t guess.

“She’s a good woman.”

“What?” Whatever Kurt had been expecting, it wasn’t that.

“De Sardet,” Vasco smirked as if that was painfully obvious, leaning back onto his hands as he stared at the ceiling. “I thought she would be just another snot-faced, bratty noble when you brought her aboard my-”

“Boat?” Kurt offered in a desperate attempt to change the subject.

“Don’t make me punch you, lad,” the amusement was wiped from Vasco’s face and he shot Kurt a dark look, full of promise.

“I’ve got a decade on you at least, whelp,” Kurt drawled. The sailor was built like a reed, tall and lithe, relying on speed rather than strength in combat. Kurt could take the hit. It would be less painful than this conversation.

“It’s a wonder what she sees in you, old man. Especially with such young, virile specimens around.”

That sucked all of the bravado out of him because Vasco wasn’t wrong.

“She’ll see that eventually and move on to someone…more suitable,” Kurt said flatly, seeing that there was no way he was going to dissuade Vasco from pursuing the topic. He reached for his wrist, dismayed to find it bare. Where had the leather tie gone? When was the last time he- Clearing his throat, he worried his skin and said, “I doubt she is hurting for suitors.”

“If you truly believe that, you haven’t been paying attention.”

Something in Vasco’s tone irritated him, raised his figurative hackles. Maybe it was the smug superiority? More likely it was the sly condescension.

“Is that disappointment I hear?” Kurt snapped, glaring down at his empty wrist.

“Aye, surely is, but not for the reason you think,” the smile was back on Vasco’s face, needling him further. “De Sardet is one a hell of a woman but she’s not exactly my type.”

“Too noble?”

“Too in love for a start,” Vasco sighed, waving a hand. “Not enough five o’clock shadow for a second.” 

“Vasco-”

“I think some honesty would do you both good,” Vasco continued as if he hadn’t heard him, snorting before he said, “If we were at sea, I’d lock you both in a cupboard until you either sorted it out or the ship was rocking in a way that had nothing to do with the sea.”

The idea of being locked in the dark with her, her supple body forced up against him-

Surely, he was too injured for _that_ kind of reaction?

Kurt shook his head, shifting and tugging at the blanket, “Thank heavens for small mercies then.”

“Don’t think that I would be opposed to locking you both in De Sardet’s closet.”

There was another pause. Kurt couldn’t think of anything to say to that, and he certainly wasn’t about to think of it. He pulled the rough blanket further up his middle.

Vasco sighed, “Why not stop fighting yourself and live happily ever after?”

“Happily ever afters don’t exist anywhere outside your poems, Sailor,” Kurt’s snorted, voice gruff and resigned. “She’d realise that she had chosen an old man that could offer her less than nothing. There would be no happiness for us and when she left, and she would…I wouldn’t have any of her.”

“As good a reason as any, I suppose,” Vasco murmured, reaching once again for the flask in his pocket. They shared another drink of the gods-awful swill before he continued. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think De Sardet is the kind of woman to sit around and wait for a man to ‘offer’ her anything, she makes her own fortune like that. I don’t doubt she could bring the world to its knees if she was of a mind.”

Truer words were never spoken.

“The only thing that she needs from you is your love and she already has that, she just doesn’t know it.”

Panic flared in Kurt’s chest, “I don’t-”

“I’ve seen more of the world than you realise, Kurt, and I’ve been lucky enough to be in love more than the average sailor, even. Sometimes for a day or a week, sometimes longer. Sometimes it never goes away,” a wistful look settled over Vasco’s sharp features, it was the same look he got whenever he talked about his ship. Kurt scoffed to cover his amusement but Vasco’s eyes narrowed as if he knew his thoughts anyway. “It doesn’t matter for how long, only how well. I hold all of them dear. Trust me when I say that I know what love looks like.” 

“I-”

“Let her make you happy, mercenary,” Vasco turned to look at him, infuriating wisdom in his eyes. “Whether it’s for a weekend, a month, or a lifetime. Let her.”

How could he let her waste herself like that? Something inside him hummed and glowed and the memory of her love washed over him.

“Besides, you might be less grumpy if you finally got lai-”

“Don’t make _me_ punch _you_,” Kurt growled in imitation of Vasco’s earlier words.

“You don’t scare me-”

“Vasc-oh!” De Sardet stood in the doorway, a hand at her breast.

Kurt couldn’t make out her features, she was backlit by blinding daylight, but he could _feel_ her relief.

“I think I need a trip to a brothel, it’s been too long since I’ve heard a pretty woman say my name like _that_,” Vasco chuckled and hauled himself to his feet, throwing Kurt a smirk over his shoulder in answer to his low growl. “I’ll leave you to it.”

He patted De Sardet on the shoulder as he left, shutting the door behind him.

Kurt sat up, “Ciel-“

She flew into his arms, dropping herself unceremoniously into his lap without thought for his injuries. He found he stopped caring when she pressed her lips to his. Hard. It was nothing like the first kiss, there was no heat or tension, only the feeling of her pouring her relief into that chaste press of flesh. Her lips were dry, bitten to high heaven in her worry, and _perfect_.

“I’m sorry,” she sniffled when she pulled back, her features torn between horror and happiness. Worried that she’d broken her promise to him, no doubt. “I was so worried. I thought-”

“I know,” Kurt brushed the hair out of her face, fingers lingering on her cheek. Wetness spreading below his fingertips.

She was pale, red-eyed, and still wore the shirt covered in his blood. Had she left his side at all?

Her hands fell from around his neck to twist in the blanket pooled in his lap, “I feared-”

“I know,” he said again and wrapped a hand around the back of her neck. He tugged her gently towards him.

“I-” a shudder went through her and she collapsed into his chest. Her tears were hot on his collarbone as she tried to burrow into him.

“Shh. I’ve got you,” he murmured into her hair, wrapping his arms around her. “I’ve got you.”

“You didn’t leave me,” her voice was so hoarse he could barely make out the words.

“Never, Ciel. I do not have it in me,” he said, more honest with her than he’d been in months as he pressed a long kiss to the top of her head.


	6. Chapter 6

Kurt groaned, a deep rumble that vibrated through his ribs like an offbeat parry, and shoved at the scratchy blanket that had somehow ended up heaped atop him. A thick lump of woollen ridges and valleys that looked and felt like dirty sand and was clammy with his sweat. With a hiss and grunt, he thrust it down over his body with impatient fingers.

It seemed to catch and pool on everything on the way down.

He refused to open his eyes for any of it, it was far too early if the dull pounding behind his eyes was any indication. Far too early for any of it. Tired and overwrought still, his body protested that he dared move at all.

Nose scrunching, he wondered how it was that the Natives, a people that boasted no horses or their ilk, still had blankets that smelled like a stable in midsummer. He couldn’t be sure which was worse: smelling like clammy horseflesh or the ripeness of his wrappings, left to marinate in his perspiration overnight.

When the blanket tangled around his feet, Kurt gave up and left it twisted around his ankles. His chest heaved as best it could against the restrictive bindings on his torso. Despite De Sardet’s ill-advised healing and a three-day coma, his body very much felt like it had been leapt upon from a great height by an entire mountain. But even with all that, it was difficult to focus on anything but the sticky heat that saturated the room.

That his feet needed to be sacrificed to the torture of prickly woollen fibres to feel the cooler, only marginally so, air against his shoulders was a small price to pay.

The air of the hut was acrid in his nostrils, courtesy of whatever now body-warmed poultice they had slathered him in. The antiseptic stench of herbs was enough to dredge up memories better left buried. Kurt was suddenly in a field hospital in his youth, green and trembling. Eyes glassy, he watched as his brothers and sisters in arms died around him. Hands soaked in blood and gunpowder, useless for aught but killing. Smoke and that same medicinal tang had coated his throat for days after. 

Another tug from his mind and he was trapped in that dingy cell once more. It had been frigid, with only the pitch and damp for company - still better than the thoughts swirling in his head. A prayer to whatever might be out there had fallen from his frantic lips as his blood pulsed hot and heavy between his fingers. He had fought to stay conscious just long enough to fish out the poultice hidden in the lining of his boot. Press and hold and pray. Shivering had soon overtaken him, violent in its intensity and incredibly painful. More bruise than man, Kurt had barely made it through the night.

The others, in the cells around him, had not been so lucky.

Kurt tore his mind away from those places with well-practised violence and shoved the memories back into the dark recesses of his mind. Just like putting them in a box, locking it tightly and nailing it shut before dropping it into an endless pit and losing the key. It never worked indefinitely, however. The painful memories always clawed their way back up like blackened, thorny vines creeping through a second-storey window.

And so, the muggy press against his slick skin soon became a respite rather than a nuisance. He focused on that, narrowing the wandering of his exhausted mind to allow for nothing else. Everything around him was sweltering, melting: the dark room beyond his dewy lids; his balmy skin and damp hair; the pulsing pain in his abdomen; even the softness pressed close to his chest was blistering. The syrupy air teetered on the brink of being too hot to draw in, a fever sweat that rested on his skin – stroking and murmuring but never fully igniting.

What he would not give for a frigid dip in some river in the middle of nowhere now.

Languid and too heavy to open, his eyes remained shut as Kurt tried to blow a stray hair away from his face. The stream of air, short and sharp, offered him no quarter in regards to either the temperature or the ticklish strands sweeping across his brow. When he tried to move once more, he was discouraged by the revolting feel of the dressings constricting him and wholly hampered by the dead weight of his right arm.

Kurt grunted, reaching up to rub at his brow with one hand as he flexed the fingers of the other, dead one. The impossibly soft thing nestled up against him, something that he’d barely registered as being anything other than _more heat_, murmured sweetly and burrowed into his chest.

Panic, white like sheet lightning in a swirling, dark storm, flashed in his mind. Once, twice, thrice. A staccato thundering of fear and confusion that was a primal refrain all around him, throbbing deep in his temples. Something scalding and bitter, as familiar as his face in the looking glass, raced through his blood like wildfire. Higher, it beckoned with a crooked, clawed finger. Fight, it whispered with a tongue quenched in venom. _Flee_, a thought lost in the torrent – always lost under the pounding bass of the beat, always dismissed as quickly as it came.

_Fight or die. _That’s what they had told him, whispered to him in the dark, and it was a lesson he had learned well.

His muscles twitched, coiling tight enough to pinch. But the discomfort _was_ a comfort, a sign he was still alive.

Not there. Not anymore. That cell was gone, destroyed. An old life that was a continent away, a lifetime away. They had destroyed those that would have continued the abhorrent regime of night training. Dead and gone. No other young men or women would be hurt in such a camp again, they had made sure of it. Would continue to-

_Get up, _his body screeched nonetheless. It twitched and tensed waiting for a blow that would never come.

Never let them take you. Make them pay for every cut and bruise. With gnashing teeth and clawing nail, with clenching fists and kicking feet. Show them that there is a price to pay for every hurt they would inflict. Action. Consequence. _Bitter, bloody_ r_eward_.

The odour of old blood – _his blood _– stagnant and metallic was all he could smell. It rushed over his tongue, entrenching itself in the pits and valleys of his taste buds. Like an old friend. Like a bitter enemy. It caressed the back of his throat but there was nothing in his stomach to answer the siren’s call of his gag reflex. Only sheer stubbornness stopped him from retching up bile and acid onto the floor.

Kurt was solid as stone, curled in on himself. He wrestled for control and one by one he forced every seized muscle from his head to his feet to relax. Forcing sound logic back to the forefront of his mind was not so easily done, however. The blanket, still tangled and rough around his ankles was now a bondage that he could scarcely stand. He ripped himself free of it, trying not to twist and buck and wake the soft thing next to him.

_Protect_, his body sang even now, half-mad and swelling with possessiveness. His to guard, to protect, with his life if necessary. Not an order anymore, but a choice made himself.

The straw-like mat he lay on was suddenly too much for his sensitised skin, scratchy and sharp. His breath felt tight and too much all at once, almost too big to force from his throat in a stilted, gasping torrent.

Not now.

Not like this.

Not when-

The faintest hint of honeysuckle washed over him. Soothing for but a moment before shame followed along in its wake as an unwelcome interloper. It prickled and picked its way across the back of his neck with sharp intent, the heat settling deep into his cramping muscles. Soon after he was boneless on the mat, gasping and actively sweating.

It had been a long, long time since he’d reacted like that to…anything, really. He couldn’t even remember the last time. Though perhaps he simply didn’t want to - another thought dropped into the pit, a rock tied about it.

It took a handful of minutes longer before he could wrench open his eyes, before he dared to even try. He knew what he would find by his side, _who _he would find; harbour in the storm and a reminder of all his failings. Surprise shimmered at the edges of his raw mind to see her there regardless. Ciel De Sardet, Legate to the Merchant Congregation, was tucked up against his chest as though she belonged there – melted against his hard edges like she might fill him out to something resembling _whole_. Her head, surrounded by a tempestuous cascade of mahogany tresses, was pillowed on his bicep. 

The purple tint to the fingers beyond the burnished sea of hair told him that they had been in that position for some hours. That he hadn’t woken her during his wrestling match with his own body was a small miracle. Flexing his fingers in small, even increments, he tried to encourage at least some blood back into the angry-looking extremities. De Sardet was so deeply asleep that she didn’t notice the jostling at all, her squished cheek more than happy to remain where it was.

The easy contract and release of those small muscles, the smoothness of the tendons shifting under calmed him somewhat. Kurt shuddered. It was just like his worst mornings in the barracks. Alone, quiet, and quivering like a maid. A mantra of ‘don’t wake anyone, don’t draw attention. A mantra of ‘breathe in slowly, hold, release’ on his lips.

Alive. _Alive_. **_Alive_**.

It was as though De Sardet could hear his spiralling thoughts. Sighing and mumbling something he didn’t catch, the hand she had tucked between them slid over his bandaged ribs. The muscles under his skin jumped and ticked at the contact but it wasn’t unpleasant. It was distantly familiar. Her skin was cooler than his, less callused as she absently stroked along the dip of his spine. Moist and gentle, her breath thrummed against his collarbone in a slow and even rhythm.

He slowed his breathing to match hers, allowing her to lull him.

How was it that even in her sleep she was trying to soothe away everyone else’s worries? So perfectly, unerringly De Sardet. Foolish and unsure, he almost felt like some wild beast that would only be calmed by her hand. Heaven’s knew that her’s were gentler than his by far.

Powerless to stop himself, and unsure that he even wanted to, Kurt wrapped himself around her. She fit so well against him, soft and female. Greedy and drunk with proximity, he pressed his face against the crown of her head and breathed her in. Honeysuckle and sunshine - just like the palace’s garden in summer; the freckles on her face that faded with the leaves; the pink skin of her sun-kissed shoulder when her shirt slipped. Not a fever dream or some cruel trick borne of his mind. Real. Warm. In _his _arms.

His fingers were equally as covetous as they sought out more of that feminine softness, drinking her in as though his next breath hinged on it. Small strokes that started at the baby curls by her temple and lingered before tracing nonsense patterns on her scalp. Promises and truths that he could not quite lend his tongue to were lost between the gossamer strands. His eyes were unfocused, lulled to a blur by the motions and the sigh against his collarbone.

Soon enough he had the long strands trailing between his fingers, curling around his knuckles. The sound of the hair on his skin, catching on his calluses should have discouraged him, disgusted him perhaps that he touched her so familiarly. Instead, the repetitive slide righted something inside him that he hadn’t even noticed was askew.

He looked down at her when his hand snagged on a knot, watching as the thick fan of her lashes fluttered against her cheek. It was pale and a little drawn still but it no longer was blotchy from her tears.

Hazy images of the previous night struggled to the forefront of his mind, kept almost at bay by the trance he had created by stroking her hair. De Sardet had been in his lap, heavy enough to be real and welcome. Tears, her tears he thought, clinging to his cheeks and jaw. The salt of them on his lips, moonshine behind it on his tongue. Her perfect mouth, overflowing with relief at seeing _him_ alive and awake, pressed hard against his. Teeth felt through even the plump flesh of her lower lip.

Kurt also vaguely remembered holding her gingerly against him, his fingers stroking over her back and sides. Remembered, too, how she had shuddered and wept, utterly vulnerable and open. They had rocked together until the sobs had subsided to the occasional sharp, trembling inhale. Small fingers that had clutched at his shoulders or twisted in her lap by turns. He had whispered nothing and everything into her hair until she had fallen asleep against him.

When his legs had started to numb, Kurt had shimmied her off of his lap to a chorus of discontented mumbles. Brows drawn close, she had reached for him. De Sardet had only finally relaxed when he pressed his chest lightly to her back and laced his fingers with hers.

At some point in the night, Siora had slipped in to check on them both, the whisper of the door enough to wake him. The smoke of the dying fire had been pungent but the flames weak and flickering. Still, it had been enough for him to see her shifting from foot to foot as she looked at De Sardet, probably wondering whether she should wake her. The glare that Kurt had only cracked one eye open for had been message enough for her to nod in understanding, leave De Sardet’s waterskin at their feet, and slip out once more.

How long ago had that been? An hour? Several? Kurt strained his neck to look over his shoulder at the small hole in the roof, situated directly over the firepit. The sky above was dove grey, the thick clouds definitely backlit by sunlight. It could only have been early morning, however. He couldn’t yet hear the hustle and bustle of daily life beyond the rudimentary walls of the hut.

The fingers tracing his spine ceased their lackadaisical travels and he peeked down at her again, expecting to see whiskey coloured eyes peering back at him. But still, De Sardet slept on.

She looked so very young and soft with features slackened in slumber and more carefree than he had seen her in months. Here she was unburdened by her duties, by Constantin’s continued sickness…by everything going on with them. Since their messy run-in with Candy Cane’s goons, she had been a model of polite civility. Her mentors would have been proud to see her so in control of herself. Kurt despaired of it. She would rib him as she used to, sought his advice when she needed it, and took him with her whenever she could. The normality of it only highlighted how strained their relationship was, though sometimes he feared it was only him that felt so. Feared, too, in the most unfair of manners, that she had moved on from him. Until the wall would fade for a moment and he saw the truth. There was still a tightness to her smiles and her gaze was never quite steady when it met his, as it flicked away on a wing of guilt.

He missed her, he could admit to himself here in the dark– the real her. The her that snorted when he made her laugh too hard, the shy smile she shot him from under lowered lashes whenever he handed her that morning’s tea, the her that always remembered his words halfway through that first parry and tightened up her footwork.

Kurt swallowed, his throat tightening once more. How much of herself she had already given to him, without question or expectation. And how much he had taken for granted. He had tried to forget her, force her back into the sexless box of student or friend. But he had failed at every turn, coaxed by her smile and his weak heart.

Honesty. That’s what Vasco had called for, had implored him to consider. Could it be that simple? Was that really the answer to all that ailed them? He doubted it, nothing was ever that simple.

Perhaps it was a good start though.

Kurt trailed his scarred knuckles over the pale, unblemished high point of her cheek with a poignant twist gracing his mouth.

Her lips, rose petal pink, parted in a sigh.

_Honesty_.

He wasn’t good enough for her, he knew that with a surety that was rooted in his bones, in the very foundation of him. The best he could offer her was his sword arm and his…affection and his experience suggested that time would ravage both. Was that enough for her, a woman who could have everything she wanted, who had the world at her fingertips? Would it continue to be enough when time had its way with them, and they had nothing but shared memories?

_‘Let her make you happy, mercenary. Whether it’s for a weekend, a month, or a lifetime. Let her.’_

How could he let her when he still had the shadows nipping at his heels? When that damned cell and all it contained stalked his nightmares, the chains rattling on its walls. The heavy footfalls beyond the locked door. The screams that followed. Others. His. _Hers_. Mostly his.

Hermann was still out there, a continued threat and a hidden knife in the darkness. Still, he hung over Kurt’s head with a smirk that assured Kurt he remembered exactly what was done to him. And the Major would continue to hide and bide his time until he could attempt once more to snatch a power that wasn’t his - a power that was partly De Sardet’s. After all, the coup had been decades in the making, what were a few more years of waiting?

Kurt still bore the marks of the Coin Guards’ envy, patience and ambition, would bear them till the day he died. The scars that littered his body were the least of them. They would not be deterred by one failed attempt.

“It cannot be all that bad,” the throat under his fingers, still wandering and mapping her skin, bobbed and De Sardet wet her lips.

“What?” His eyes fixed on the drag of her tongue like a hawk on a rabbit.

“You look like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders,” she shivered when a rough fingertip caressed the hollow atop her collarbone, her voice as wet as her lips. They glistened in the dim light of morning. “Whatever it is, I’m sure we’ll work it out.”

_‘We’_

She offered it so readily, without thought or guile. As she did with anyone who needed her help. What had any of them done to deserve her? What had he done to be lucky enough to earn her favour?

Hermann would never have her, not if Kurt had any say in it. Resolve settled in his stomach, a warm weight of acceptance and inevitability. The chains that bound him loosened, and he breathed freely for the first time in a long time. A lungful of summer that warmed him through and through.

This time when his mind flashed white it was like the first snowfall in winter, slow and quiet. Time seemed to turn to treacle as the feeling swept through him, muffling all the outside world but her. Heavy, pulsing, and blanketing. When he came back to himself her supple mouth was yielding under his demands.

De Sardet was unbearably soft and utterly scalding as he licked into her mouth with abandon, with every pent-up moment of longing. The sweetness beyond seared him and her tongue tasted like that damned peppermint tea. He would never be able to make it again without thinking of this, of her under him and gasping into his mouth.

He swallowed every little sound of pleasure and filed them away in the deepest part of him with a feral purr. Like a dragon hoarding gold but all the more precious.

_His. _

Lightning sizzled in the base of his spine when blunt nails scraped over the rough hair covering the back of his head and the purr turned into a deep rumble. When the fingers slid into the longer hair on his crown and tugged, he ignored them. It couldn’t be over, not yet. The throbbing heat, settled behind his navel, was thick as it trickled lower and urged him to continue to taste her, to touch and lick every part of her.

Another pull.

Kurt nipped at her bottom lip before he reluctantly parted from her.

Her lashes fluttered and she whimpered at the loss. The heat inside him roared in satisfaction and his palm slid along the dip of her waist. When she finally opened her eyes, the amber hue was gone, hidden behind pupils blown with desire. Dark and glassy, naked want on her flushed face, lips swollen and parted – she was the very picture of desire.

Pride blazed in his chest, radiating through his limbs, sparking in every spot he pressed against her.

“Are you sure-”

He swept down to capture her mouth once more, sure that she wanted him too. Words were lost between the glistening skin of their lips, to the sweet oblivion that was touching her. That she was concerned for him only served to fan the flames higher. Kurt couldn’t remember wanting anyone more than he wanted her than he did right then. He’d have given up his sword arm if it only meant he could keep touching her.

His fingers swept up her body, over the swell of her breasts and collarbone, up the column of her neck to twist in the hair at the nape of her neck. Kurt kissed her like a man possessed, determined to sweep through her until she was a trembling, gasping mess in the circle of his arms. But De Sardet was not one to be so easily conquered, she nipped and flicked at his mouth and tongue, teasing and fleeting. He moaned into her mouth and gripped her all the harder.

She whimpered when he pulled her head back and wrenched his mouth away. Struggling against the tight hold of his fingers, she tried to follow his mouth. Her needy keen was nearly his undoing. Their chests heaved in tandem as they panted against the others lips. Her mouth was swollen and wet, her fingers biting into his shoulders. The urge to nip and suck that succulent flesh was a pulsing ache in his teeth.

She was wanton, spread out under him like this, like the most delectable of feasts. Hair wild around her blushing face, eyes dark and full of want – he _needed_ the sight of her branded into the back of his eyelids.

De Sardet eagerly parted for him when he dragged his body over hers, settling into the yielding cradle of her thighs. She was scorching through the leather of her trousers, through the simple cotton of his. Tugging her hair again, he exposed the pale column of her throat. Open and vulnerable. The blood rushing through her neck thrummed against his mouth as he trailed open-mouthed kisses down her delicate, dewy skin. She tasted of salt and nirvana and felt like divinity incarnate.

Thighs twitching against his, her head lulled and she offered him more of her. The red marks he left in his wake, swollen and moist, made him smirk against her collarbone. When he sucked on her skin, she keened and rubbed herself against him.

Kurt shuddered.

The fever she had set running raged through his body, held him tightly in its grip. Held her just as soundly. It took every ounce of strength he had not to rut against her like some inexperienced adolescent. De Sardet curled a leg around his calf, using him as leverage to grind herself up against him with an eager whine.

He gritted his teeth so hard he thought they might shatter. Slow, they had to slow down. She wasn’t some whore picked and bought purely for his release. This was De Sardet. Ciel. His Green Bloo-

When her nails dragged over the naked skin of his shoulder blades it sent all those noble thoughts skiting out the window and he crashed his mouth against hers. He couldn’t get enough of the taste of her, the feel and the sounds she made in the back of her throat that vibrated along his tongue. There was no going back, not now.

She ripped her lips away from his, her head falling back when he ground his hardness against her. He clutched at her hip, fingers tense and sore, hard enough that he was sure he would bruise her. He couldn’t bring himself to care, the pulsing heat in his pelvis threatened to wipe his mind clean till there was only her. He wanted to consume her the way she had consumed his thoughts for months, tormenting him in the darkest hours of the night.

How many times had he thought of her like this: writhing under him in the training yard, riding him on her bed, moaning as he worked her into a frenzy with fingers and tongue. Too often. Too many times he had shoved the thoughts from his mind guiltily as his fingers itched to relieve himself to the thought of her.

Clumsy with desperation, he tugged the cotton shirt from her waistband as he nuzzled the spot just behind the hinge of her jaw. When his fingers found warm skin, he sucked hard. Crying out, she grasped at his shoulders with twitching fingers. He greedily mapped out the upward curve of her hipbone with his palm. When his skin scraped over the swell of her ribcage, De Sardet slid the length of her thigh along his.

When it reached his hip, her knee brushed the wound in his abdomen and he hissed. Pain, lancing and electric, webbed out from the lesion throughout his entire body. 

De Sardet stilled immediately.

Neither of them dared move. The only sound was their heavy, mingling pants. His face fell into the crook of her neck and slowly she lowered her leg back to the floor, taking care not to brush up against him again. Kurt’s face ticked, the pain in his abdomen extinguishing the ardour of his desire.

It was probably for the best. She deserved better than being taken on the floor like some passing fancy.

He could only sigh when she started running the fingers of one hand through his hair, the other softly kneading the muscles lying over his shoulders. For some reason the kiss she pressed to the top of his head fashioned a hard lump in his throat.

How long had it been since someone had touched him with true tenderness? A decade, perhaps. Longer, even. Most of his life sex had only been about relief. A few fumbles in the guard early on before the night training had left him avoidant of all touch. It was years before he’d visited the brothel.

But De Sardet was so much more than that.

Kurt lifted his head to look at her. There was a hesitance on her face, a shade of worry in the corner of her mouth. She was bracing herself for something. It struck him that she thought he was going to take it back, to say it didn’t matter.

He’d be a fool to think anything mattered more.

It was time to exhume the shadows in his life and exorcize them for good. It was beyond time, in truth. It was time to step into the light and move forward. Only when he was free of Hermann would he be free to offer all of himself – to do with what she would.

Kurt cleared his throat, removing the bulk of his weight from her lithe frame, “I don’t regret it.”

His voice was nigh unrecognisable to him, husky and full of missed promise. It washed over De Sardet and she shivered, melting. When she offered him a tentative smile, he returned it.

The fingers on his jaw were gentle, thoughtful as he hovered over her.

The next words were harder to get out, but easier than they would have been with anyone else, “I need your help with something.”

Curiosity sparked in her eyes, still dark and glazed. He could see her answer form on her lips before she even opened them.

“Anything for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, there we go. I hope that wasn't too disappointing, I've never written anything like this! Please be gentle with me.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Apologies for the delay but I've had a multitude of technical issues that kept me from writing this and once I finally got back into it I hated everything I wrote for this chapter. But it's done. Finally!

The heavy wooden door, still half-riven in places from the coup, made Ciel fight for every inch of ground she gained. Damned door was a talker – quite the avid conversationalist, really. No matter how delicate her touch, how tentative her push, the thing squeaked and creaked and cracked like a parched tree with a sore throat.

To add insult to injury, a particularly wicked-looking splinter snagged fast one of the brass buttons of her simple worker’s shirt, pulling it near snapping point. The linen offered her no quarter as it dug deep into the skin of her neck, though it was not quite enough to choke.

If that wasn’t just a lovely reminder of just how foolhardy this midnight excursion might prove to be.

The Gods knew that Ciel had tried to keep the thoughts at bay but the snarling, hooked branches of her darker thoughts had easily found purchase in her fogged mind. Tossing and turning the night over, she’d soon given up trying to sleep when she had twisted herself into knots inside a surprisingly constricting satin prison. Hermann’s face, unwelcome and unbidden, swam in her mind’s eye, practically formless but gloating nonetheless.

The very idea that she didn’t clearly know the face of the man who had caused Kurt so much turmoil was a fishbone in her throat.

_“Afterall, I owe my skills to you.” _

How easily the gnawing thought drove her from the downy embrace of her bed. It was shameful, really, but not enough to stop her. It already felt like Hermann had the upper hand and she hadn’t even laid eyes on him yet.

Untangling herself from the door, she let it slip shut behind her. That it did so without so much as a whisper earned it a glare as the deep orange light of the interior slid across her cheek. Putting her squarely in Coin Guard territory.

If she had truly believed in the Enlightened, she might have sent up thanks to see that the place was empty. Not even the quartermaster was anywhere to be seen, a rarity in and of itself. The only sign of him was the clipboard and parchment that littered his desk in papery peaks and valleys, a single gust of wind away from utter chaos.

Gods, it was so quiet. Every step she took, though light and cautious, seemed cacophonous. The distant din from the tavern wasn’t even close to enough to pierce the buzzing silence, though the two spaces were only separated by a single wall. Without the trademark of crashing weapons, the grunts of combatants, or the harsh snapping of the drill sergeant the space was dead. Empty and eerie enough to make the base of her spine tingle.

Even with only a symphony of silence for company, Ciel stuck close to the walls where the shadows were thick and, she hoped, the floorboards solid. Peeking around corners and flitting between patches of gloom, she slipped through the upper floor to the stairs that led to the cellar. To Hermann.

The silence, thankfully, didn’t last long.

Music from the brothel drifted up the stairs on a merry breeze, beckoning her into the depths of the building.

A stripe of light painted the length of the cobbled floor before her, reaching almost as far as the bottom step. It was a dangerous invitation. A guiding light for her to carefully toe if ever there was one. Ciel followed it like a moth to a flame.

The crack between door and frame was just wide enough that she could make out the rough and ready shape of the jailor in the room beyond. It was the same man she had spoken to earlier, still upright and awake. Disappointment simmered in her gut as her mouth twisted to keep a sigh behind her teeth. She was soothed somewhat by the lackadaisical angle he was slumped in, the quill barely gripped between his fingers as he pulled it across some parchment. The scape of the nib was the only sound she could make out beyond his breathing.

He sighed often. As though the weight thrust upon his broad shoulders was barely bearable. Too, he would raise his head and palm at his face or pinch the bridge of his nose. Tired, no doubt. Ciel could relate only too well. Whenever his hand would fall back to his side, however, it was not tiredness that wracked his features. It was guilt, confusion. His eyes would linger on the cell block, his lips a grim slash across his broad features. 

Features that grew tauter with each scrub. If he snapped would Hermann be gone by morning? Smuggled out to Gods knew where with the dawn?

If only he’d drank the damned wine like the rest of them. What was he thinking? When Ciel had given him the tainted bottle she’d fully assumed that he would drink it too - plausible deniability and all.

She tore a hand through her hair as she considered her options.

There weren’t many, really.

It was no good; the jailor would have to be dealt with. She couldn’t run the risk that his guilt got the better of him.

Ciel jumped when a very loud, very _theatrical _– not to mention flattering – moan came from the brothel.

Cheeks flaming, she set to work.

Hooking her boot around the door, Ciel swung it open with as much force as her awkward positioning would allow. As it was, it allowed for more than enough. Dust kicked up around her in an earthen dance, the slam of wood on stone and the resounding reverberation its primal beat.

“Fucking wind,” the jailor grumbled, voice hoarse from either cold or thirst.

When his chair groaned, Ciel pressed herself flush against the wall and waited. A handful of breaths passed, each on the heel of a heavy footstep. A few more and a long shadow stretched out on the floor before her, filling up the doorway and blocking almost all the light.

He never saw her coming, still grumbling to himself as he stepped into the room and reached for the door. A vicious kick to the back of his knee sent him crumpling, bringing him down to her level so that she could drive the length of her palm into the side of his neck. The only sound was the dull crack of his face against the flagstones. It was a textbook takedown, simple and effective. Perfect.

The clean-up proved to be…less so. Heaving him back into the room by the ankle was tricky given that he outweighed her by a hundred pounds without his armour. Sweat was pouring down her temple by the time she had him sitting against the wall by the door, pouring poisoned wine down his throat.

He seemed to relax into himself with each sip of the sleeping draught, with each circle she massaged on his throat. She couldn’t help but run a critical eye over the unconscious man. He was all dark circles and days of ragged growth. Gods above if he didn’t look about as tired as she felt.

A bruise was already forming on his cheek and Ciel pressed a fingertip to it, wishing that she could heal it for him. But she couldn’t. All she could offer him was a whispered apology for the headache he was sure to have when he woke. Not to mention the earful from his superior officer that he was due.

With a shamed grimace, she made her way into the cell block.

Dingy wouldn’t have done it justice. The cells were dark and musty, lit by one single lamp that was sure to gutter out before the hour’s end. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust enough to make out the murky shape of Hermann in one of the back cells. The lone occupant, he was draped across one corner, head kicked back and eyes closed as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

Anger simmered low in her gut at the sight and her only comfort was the mottled bruise that covered the entirety of one side of his face. The swell of pride at the sight should have shamed her, seeing as she had been the one to put it there, but it only pleased her.

“About time someone showed,” Hermann snapped hoarsely, one eye cracking open at the sound of her heels on the flagstones. “Now get me out of here so I can…”

The growled words died in his throat when she stepped into the pitiful light.

Lifting his head, he opened both eyes – no small feat with his swollen face – and appraised her. Ciel kept her distance, out of arms reach in case he tried to grab her through the bars with her back ramrod straight and her hands relaxed at her side. There was no way she was going to show this man any weakness if she could help it.

Snorting, he scratched the growth beneath his weak jaw, “You’re not one of mine.”

Begrudging though it was, Ciel had to admire Hermann’s ability to keep a level head. He looked and sounded unconcerned, placid though he had to be in some pain and just…disconcertingly calm. Ciel wasn’t fooled though, it was the calm of a hunter. Of a person just waiting for the right moment, the right opportunity.

“Most certainly not,” Ciel drawled, tongue lingering and clicking against her teeth on the hard ‘t’ sound, “and thank heavens’ for that.”

Hermann laughed mirthlessly, a sound drier than a dead autumn leaf and just as crisp and, for some reason, it made her skin crawl.

He watched her with dark eyes, barely moving as a thick silence descended over them. Unconcerned, he worked the split in his lip with a thick tongue. It was oddly grotesque and…_violating_ the way he considered her as he tongued his flesh. Curious and dangerous, her body was telling her. As though she were in a cage with a predator. Blood trickled freely to coat his teeth, which were glistening crimson as his mouth formed a terrible grin.

He knew he was making her uncomfortable and relished it.

In a flash of silent grace, he was on his feet and smirking at her from between two bars, “If you’re not here to make my last night one to remember, _sweetheart_, you can fuck off.”

Revulsion rolled through her at the sudden and intrusive thought of this man’s hands on her, his sweaty body on top of her-

Ciel kept her expression in check, eyes and mouth flat. His words were crass – meant to revolt and distract. He wanted her off balance, for whatever reason. She’d be damned if she danced to his tune without a fight.

He couldn’t distract her from the fact that he didn’t, even for a moment, believe that this was his last night alive.

Ciel raised a sardonic brow, offering him her own little chuckle, “Do I look like a whore to you?”

Hermann’s eyes narrowed as he took in her cheap shirt and breeches. They were plain, certainly not her usual fare, and wouldn’t give him a damned thing. When he reached her boots, shining dully in the lamplight, he scoffed, “I see.”

There was so much hate in those two words that it was breath-taking, mind-boggling.

“You do? Remarkable, really, given your previous lack of foresight,” she replied, voice as sweet as spun sugar. She might well have been referring to the weather that morning and not the biggest political upheaval this side of the ocean.

He glared at her easy manner before rolling his neck and shoulders. Little did he know that it only highlighted the splotches of patchy anger covering his skin.

“Foresight, eh?” Hermann asked her before spitting at her feet. His saliva coated the toe of her boot. “How’s that for foresight?”

Well, wasn’t he just a charmer?

Ciel sniffed and raised her gaze from the globular insult, “Well, we cannot say that the Guard has lacked ambition. Luckily, it was the very thing that blinded you.” Ciel tilted her head, folding her arms. “Pride certainly came before the fall and you’ve fallen rather far, wouldn’t you say, Major?”

“Could you be any more of a fucking noble?”

This time she did react, sucking in a shocked breath. It was not the bitter sentiments that surprised her but the pale familiarity. How often had she heard the ghost of those very thoughts in Kurt’s words when she was growing up? Seen the evidence in how ruthlessly he drove them and how he kept everyone in the palace at arm’s length?

Were those sentiments the product of this man and his co-conspirators? Had they been moulded by the hands that gripped the bars so tightly?

Had Kurt truly hated Constantin and her because of who they had been born to, even though they were but children? Or had he simply been following a learned pattern of thought, beaten into him through months of torture?

Her heart hurt for Kurt – bled with the knowledge that someone had used him so abhorrently.

“Such vitriol. Was that what made it so easy to send in the firing squad?” She asked, clearing her throat.

“That,” Hermann leaned the unblemished side of his face on one of the bars, his hands dangling in the air on her side, limp at the wrists, “amongst other things. It was no less than you all deserved – sitting up in your fancy houses supping on meats and wine that cost more than a year’s salary for the working man.”

“Is that what you told yourselves? How you justified the slaughter of hundreds?”

How simple it was. How easily the propaganda rolled off of Hermann’s vile tongue. How true it might have sounded to the young, the downtrodden, or the angry. Deceit hidden amongst words that promised honour and great deeds when, in truth, they were fuelled by nothing more than greed or resentment. How many young men and women died for the poisoned thoughts of those that were above them? For promises of power and wealth.

“Better than the deaths of thousands. What about those that die in your employ, worked to death, or those starving on the streets whilst you gorge yourselves? We’re nothing but playthings to you at best, less than nothing at worst. You’re a fucking plague.”

If the Coin Guard had truly believed rebellion would free the lower classes then why try to take Teer Fradee rather than the continent? It would have been a harder win but that would have meant little in the face of their righteousness, surely? Was the freedom of the many not the goal, as Hermann implied?

No, they wanted the Island. They wanted an easy win, where their machinations could dispatch a burgeoning hierarchy before it could be fully established and cement their position. They wanted the potential riches and power of a land free of the malichor.

It had nothing to do with empowering the poor.

“Like those ‘working men’ would have been any better under Coin Guard rule. You would merely have replaced the nobility with your highest-ranking officers and the cycle would have continued,” Ciel sucked on her lower lip as she pondered her next words, a wave of old anger settling into the pit of her stomach like it had never waned. Like some half-healed wound. “Tell me: which city did you plan to make yours? New Serene is the blankest of canvases, you could have achieved much there. Or perhaps Hikmet’s exotic allure was more to your taste.”

Hermann wisely kept his silence, pursing his thin lips and scowling at her from under heavy brows. The downward twitch, barely perceptible, at the corner of his mouth, when she mentioned New Serene was answer enough.

The very idea of Hermann sitting in her cousin’s chair…

With a feral growl more deserving of a ulg than a human, she sprang at him and slapped the bar by his face with the flat of her palm. Pain rang through her fingers and wrist but it didn’t matter. Ciel couldn’t help but grin as she watched him take a quick step back, satisfaction in the cat-like curl of her mouth.

Realising his mistake, he stepped back to her, bringing them nose to nose. It was too late to hide his weakness, however.

“_Whose_ seat were you vying for?”

Recognition flickered in the depths of Hermann’s eyes and he chuckled, a guttural sound that set her nerves alight, “I know you. You’re Kurt’s little piece of ass. The Prince’s niece.”

Ciel eyed the bars and briefly wondered whether headbutting the smug bastard would be worth the bruise. With a lingering glare instead, she stepped out of his space. It had been foolish to get within arms distance of him, foolish to lose her head…the idea of his lording it over the people of new serene was just too much to bear.

“I knew sending the fucking brat to your lot was a mistake,” Hermann continued. The look he gave her left no doubt as to who he blamed for Kurt’s shifting loyalties. The idea almost made her proud. It certainly made her sink into a nonchalant hip as she groped for control, “But Torsten thought he knew better than the rest of us. He was convinced that night training had beaten the disobedience out of Kurt.”

“Not to mention that we all thought that your uncle was enough of a bastarding noble that it’d keep Kurt bitter. Keep his hate sharp and useful. To think: all that work undone for a screw with a pretty face.”

“I was a child when you sent Kurt to us. I doubt my face had any bearing on his loyalties.”

“But what about that sweet cunt between your legs? You weren’t a child forever,” Hermann leered at her with yellowing teeth. Ciel stared at him once more, unwilling to give him any reaction. When he didn’t get what he wanted, Hermann leaned his face out, his voice dropping low - as though they were sharing some secret. “And we all know he doesn’t like the boys…he used to fight so hard. Tell me: does he still do that thing with-”

Ciel’s hand flew to her side and before he could finish that thought, the barrel of her flintlock was digging into the centre of his forehead. Hermann sucked on his lower lip, the noise filthy and lascivious. Like he got off on her pulling a gun on him…or to the thoughts of Kurt. She half expected him to start pawing at his breeches, the look on his face was so lustful.

Who the fuck was this piece of shit? If he so much as moved a finger or made another noise like that, she’d blow his brains out.

“What’re you going to do, girl? Shoot me?” Hermann purred, his eyes going where his hands could not. The flesh under his roving gaze seemed to shift and itch, desperate to separate from her body and get away from him.

“I could,” that she kept her voice even was a surprise but still the words were heavy with meaning, weighted with intent. She _could_ shoot him. Here. In cold blood. As an execution and not a defence. The knowledge was new and not wholly welcome. “It would make for some interesting cleanup, of course. I doubt the governor would be pleased but we’re not on the best of terms currently. I’d consider killing you and irking Cornelia as killing two birds with one teeny, tiny bullet.”

“The old mother would be the least of your worries,” Hermann said, lowly, voice still laden with desire. His hand whipped up to wrap firmly around the barrow of the pistol. “The guard would not-”

“Oh, _please_. Spare us both that speech,” Ciel sneered, noting that he made no move to remove the gun pressed to his face. Hermann was either stupid or stupidly sure of himself – and Kurt had made it clear that these men were no fools. “Do you really still believe that you’re making it out of here alive, Major?”

Before Hermann could reply there was a thump from the rooms beyond the cell block, followed by the hiss of steel leaving leather. A look of pure, serpentine satisfaction slithered across Hermann’s shadowed face.

“Oh, you’re in for it now, girlie.”

She nearly shot him for the glee alone.

“That is yet to be determined. It could be one of mine.”

“In the barracks? Unlike-”

“Green Blood?” Kurt stood in the doorway, sword in hand and looking ready for a fight.

The sigh of relief that he let out upon seeing her there made her feel a little guilty. Had he thought that Hermann or an accomplice had been the one to chin the guard?

“The guard your work?”

“Yes.”

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t the traitor himself,” Hermann cooed, that infuriating smirk back in place. “Do come in and join us. Your whore here was just about to make a very grave mistake.”

Ire flashed in Kurt’s eyes, turning the pale blue of his irises to shards of ice.

“I thought the walls would benefit from a splash of colour.”

Kurt snorted softly and sheathed his sword, coming to her side. He was dressed simply, in the same vein as her, with a soft shirt that gaped at the collarbone and breeches and boots. Ciel swallowed despite the situation, flushing with heat at the rare sight of him out of armour.

It was softened to something tender though when she spotted the dark circles beneath his eyes. Tired, cold, and more than a little haunted. He looked terrible, obviously driven from his bunk in much the same way she had been.

Had his sleep been equally as fleeting and mocking?

“Killing you would never be a mistake,” Kurt said as he turned to look at Hermann.

“Looks like there is still some bite in you, brat,” Hermann released his grip on her gun, turning away from her entirely. “Here we were all thinking you’d been tamed by some pissy little dainty.”

“Still holding a gun Hermann,” Ciel nudged his temple with said weapon, bent on adding another barrow indent to his skin. “Men in your position should think twice about throwing names around, hm?”

Hermann ignored her. The only sign that he even knew she was there was the twitch in his cheek when she pressed the barrel deeper. Instead, he focused on Kurt with an uncomfortable intensity. Ciel could feel the crushing weight of the gaze from outside the exchange and admired Kurt. The assessment barely ruffled his feathers. Tiredness aside, he looked vital, strong, as he stared flatly back at Hermann.

Pride bloomed in her chest.

“You know, it’s not too late to redeem yourself, son,” Hermann eventually spoke, voice shredded velvet in the dark – knowing one wrong word, one misconstrued notion, would send his quarry fleeing.

The change in Kurt was instantaneous. What had been lounging grace became a coiled expectation in the blink of an eye. She watched the words roll over him, watched them sink in before they could be discarded.

Hermann saw it too.

“Never too late, my boy. You could still make us all proud. Make _me_ proud,” Hermann insisted and gods if he wasn’t convincing. The dimness of the cell seemed to lend him an ethereal quality, a power all his own. “You could be a hero, Kurt. A god amongst men. It could all be yours. Ours. To the victor the spoils, son. Don’t we deserve that? Don’t you?”

The cadence of the words was so slow and lulling. Soft as a lullaby but dangerous as the knife’s edge on which they all stood.

Ciel fought the urge to worry at her lip, the looming frame at her shoulder suddenly feeling a little more threatening in the ebb of the torch. Leaning over her, drinking up all of the available oxygen, Kurt swayed towards those poisoned words.

“Oh?”

That single little word scraped across her nerves, fraying their delicate edges.

“You could still right your wrongs,” Hermann cooed with a twisted paternal wisdom that made Kurt stand up a little straighter. With shattering clarity, it suddenly became all too clear how the coup had come to be. No wonder men had died following bad orders when they were uttered with such black conviction.

The shake in her hand was becoming more visible with each beat of the tightening atmosphere. Swallowing down lamp ash and nerves, Ciel reminded herself of who was at her back. Her mentor, friend, and love. He’d denied this man once, he would surely do it again.

So why did Kurt suddenly feel dangerous?

He’d always been bigger than her. Physically dwarfing her lithe, athletic frame with his broad shoulders and corded muscle. Too, he was more skilled and more willing to kill. It had been obvious from their first meeting that he was a man who had killed well and often though he was barely more than a boy.

The knowledge, which had never bothered her before, was a corkscrew between her shoulder blades – a sharpening tightness that pinched with each passing moment till she thought it might burrow right out from under her sternum.

Hermann’s eyes, glittering onyx and red-rimmed, slid over her form once more as if seeing her for the first time. Finally seeing the potential in her and the situation. Still, he couldn’t completely hide the sneer that carved itself cruelly into his bruised cheek or the heat that was creeping into his eyes.

His next words were whispered into the cell as though he were encouraging a bygone lover to open her thighs for him, “You could still fix this, son. One little twist is all it would take.” His eyes slid over her chin, down to the shadows at her throat. “She’d go down so nicely. Quiet and neat, even. It could all be yours, Kurt. You’d just need to reach out and _grab it_.”

Ciel almost yelped when rough hands slid around her hips, chasing the stale air from her working lungs. Warm breath, so soft on her cheek. Meant to quiet her and distract as those hands, suddenly too rough-skinned, all too familiar, held her firmly against him. She couldn’t even squirm.

Vulnerable didn’t even begin to cut how she felt. The way Kurt’s hands stroked over her waist for a moment…before moving, achingly slow over her. It was terrifying and uncomfortable. Intimate. Gooseflesh trailed behind those callused fingertips and left her feeling exposed and raw. One hand slithered over her shoulder as the other meandered tenderly down the opposite arm – the one that was aloft, still levelled at Hermann

The Major looked delighted by this turn of events, sucking on his lip once more, knuckles white around the bars gripped between his fingers.

Calluses snuck down her bicep, curling around the indent of her elbow before his thumb dragged over her wrist. His other hand was equally busy, wasting no time wrapping itself around her throat. She had no doubt that he could feel the hammer of her pulse beneath his thumb.

Swallowing all her fears, Ciel forced herself to go limp against Kurt. She gave herself over to him, trusting him with everything she had.

Head lulling against his shoulder, she heard Hermann breathe, “Yeah, just like that.”

She could picture him now, watching them like some sort of voyeur. His eyes lit from within, shiny with his apparent triumph. Soon enough Kurt’s larger hand was wrapped around hers, near crushing her bones between the gun and his grip. The kiss he pressed to the hinge of her jaw was all the warning he gave.

The fingers on her hand tightened, shifted and then her arm was snapping taut at the elbow.

“Fucking _fuck_,” Hermann spat, stumbling back as he clutched at his forehead.

Kurt chuckled, deep and even, as he stepped away. Cold rushed in to press against all the warm spots he had left behind and embarrassed, traitorous, and molten heat slithered between her legs.

“I made my choice,” Kurt said, coming around to place himself between Hermann and her.

Grunting, Hermann pulled his hand away to examine the blood coating his fingertips, “Is some high-class cunt worth everything we’ve worked for, huh? Everything you’ve endured?”

“Everything I’ve endured? That’s on you and yours, Hermann. I won’t blame the nobles for it anymore. I won’t be your puppet.”

“No. No, you’ll be hers!” Hermann shrieked, shrill and frantic as he pawed at the bars. “It was to make you better! To make all of us better.”

Ciel shuddered as she watched Hermann crack, faced down as he was by his failure. His greatest failure. The entire outcome of the coup had hinged on Kurt’s torn loyalties; his inherent goodness. Like a lunging viper, Kurt reached through the bars to snatch Hermann by the shirt. Bone and flesh met iron as Hermann was wrenched up against the bars.

All the danger and self-possession the major had owned fled on the wind of a pathetic, guttural whimper. Nothing more than a well-practised mirage, she realised.

“All the coup achieved was to make you pariahs. Already your men are being turned out from the homes and businesses of your benefactors. You’re infamous turncoats now, and worse, a bad investment,” Ciel croaked from behind Kurt’s shoulder, shooting Hermann a baleful look. “You’re haemorrhaging money and goodwill and whilst your organisation may survive on Teer Fradee, if Sieglinde plays her cards right, the same cannot be said for your operations on the mainland.”

“You need us!” Hermann spat, teeth bared like an animal as he clawed at Kurt’s arm with split, dirty nails.

“Yes, but not as much as you need us, Hermann. Many recruits will suffer for your pride and ambition.”

“You little bi-”

There was a fleshy crack as Kurt wrenched Hermann forward once more, driving his knee up between the stuck man’s legs. With a feral howl, Hermann folded to the floor in a shuddering, snivelling heap.

Ciel crouched by the door, balancing on her heels as she whispered, “We talked about names, did we not? You should have listened to me.”

Hermann was too busy cradling his manhood to do anything but splutter at her.

How far the mighty fall, indeed.

Kurt threaded his fingers through the hair at the back of her head, tugging her gently upwards, “Seen enough?”

“Yes.”

“The first thing…I’m going to do when I get out of here is to wring your pretty neck,” Hermann gasped, tearing his way to his knees, still all but doubled over, “and you’re going to watch me as I do it, brat. You can watch the light leave her fucking eyes. Then I’m going after your cousin to take what’s mine.”

“Oh, Hermann,” Ciel breathed, “Haven’t you realised what cell you’re in? The Ordo Luminous’ finest quarters. Only the best for the man that would be the governor of New Serene, after all.”

Kurt folded his arms over his chest, “You die with the sunrise.”

“What? No.” Hermann’s voice quavered, “I’m no heretic.”

“No, but you’ll burn like one just the same.”

“You can’t do this,” Hermann clawed his way over to the bars, staring up at them with fear in his eyes for the first time. “Not to-”

“To you? But I already have,” Kurt’s gaze was shuttered as he gazed down at the pathetic shade of his torturer. “No mercy. No empathy. It’s them or us, right? That’s what you taught us, isn’t it? You just never thought you’d be on the wrong side of that fight.”

Hermann started muttering to himself, head swinging back and forth, as he gripped the bars so hard that his arms vibrated.

“Do you need a minute?” Ciel touched Kurt on the shoulder, drawing his attention away from Hermann.

“No, he’s not worth more of my time. He’s stolen enough of it.”

“You can’t leave me like this! Guards, seize them! Someone-”

The banshee notes of Hermann’s words were the last straw. Drawing on her magic, Ciel sent a lancing shadow straight at his throat. Hermann gasped, gurgled, and grabbed his throat before collapsing to the floor once more.

“One for the road?” Kurt asked around a wry half-smile.

Ciel shook her head, “Let’s just get out of here.”

Kurt followed silently in her shadow as she stepped over the jailor before speaking, “Should I ask what you were doing down there?”

“Certainly not trying to get my neck snapped,” she said, immediately regretting the harsh words when he winced and drew back from her. Ciel sighed and reached for his hand. They could deal with that another time. This moment? It wasn’t about her. “I’m not sure. I just needed to look at him and see…something. I needed to know he was still in that cell and that he was getting what he deserves.”

Kurt drew her into his arms in silent apology, both of them ignoring the rowdy…sounds from the brothel as he tucked her under his chin. She let him soothe her with his hands on her back and his cedarwood scent in her nose.

“Do you think this will be the closure you need?” she tentatively asked after a moment, wriggling out of his grip enough to look up at him.

He tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear before sighing, “When his ashes are scattered to the corners of the world, maybe. For now, it is enough to know that my memories will go up in flames with him.”

“And what about turning your thoughts to the future, Captain?”

“It is the first time I’ve felt free to do so,” the agonizingly tender smile he offered her…well, he might well have been offering her his heart, his future. Her own heart swelled with so much love she thought her chest might not be able to contain it.

Ciel swallowed, gaze dropping to his chin as her hands slid up to rest on his chest, “Oh? And what are your thoughts on the matter?”

His silence stretched on so long that she began to worry that she had read him wrong. Perhaps he didn’t want her now that he had everything to live for, without the shadows of his past hanging over his head…

“And so, it seems the poor warrior cannot find the words,” Kurt breathed, the tiniest frown knitting the skin between his brows. “Such a fool.”

Unable to help her relieved chuckle, Ciel stood on tiptoe and brushed a chaste kiss across his mouth, “Show me?”

Kurt drew her impossibly close, till there was no space between them, and did exactly that. 


	8. Chapter 8

“Oh, cousin,” the words were a wet and wobbly exhale, more air than anything else. Funny how they punched her squarely in the gut despite that. “I am going to die.”

The finality, the dejection – Gods, just the total lack of fight in Constantin– was sharper than any blade, hotter than any bullet that Ciel had taken amid battle. The words cared not a whit for her as they scraped away at the back of her ribs in long, repetitive strokes, determined to leave her gouged and leaking marrow into the space where her heart should have been. Where it would have been if it were not torn asunder.

‘No, no, no, no, no. Please no. Please…anything but this’ was a round in her head, twirling and spinning its continuous chorus.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They were supposed to be safe from the malichor that ravaged the mainland. They were supposed to conquer it together…to find a cure and bring it home. The two of them against the world - both the old and the new.

Yet here she was, peering over a cliff face set high above a churning ocean of uncertainty. A single gust away from falling over the edge and being lost to the depths of oblivion, to the darkness of that watery abyss. To whatever lay beyond. Surety was an illusion, she realised. And safety a charade.

It was laughable how naïve they had both been.

Tragic didn’t even begin to describe it.

It was difficult to say whose grief had borne them to the marble floor, Constantin’s or her own. Perhaps it had been a combination of both. Regardless of the answer, they found themselves tangled up together, clinging in their anguish. 

Ciel’s fingers felt thick and numb as they carded through Constantin’s ashen locks. Words, whispers, and promises of a cure were lost amongst the stands and had left her throat raw. Not that the pain stopped her lips working in a soundless refrain, leaving her mouthing uselessly over his hair.

“To think Father will finally be free of me. Oh, how he’ll rejoice to see me in my grave,” the tears that that soaked her shirt and neck, once hot, were as cold now as his words. The salt of them lingered in the air, behind her tongue, and on her skin. The sting was an unkind reminder that this wasn’t a terrible nightmare.

There would be no waking up from this. No reprieve. The world was dangerously askew, dangling upside down and spinning faster than she could process. It wouldn’t allow her to get her bearings and it certainly hadn’t allowed her a moment to breathe. This was her reality now; some horrid parody of her life not hours before.

Ciel’s eyes slid shut in a last-ditch attempt to maintain composure, “Enough, Constantin. _Please._” Any other time she might have argued with him, might have told him that such thoughts were untrue or beneath him, but she couldn’t find the words for the lies, never mind the voice. Instead, she told the truth, “I cannot bear to hear you talk like that.”

“Why? We both know it’s true.”

Of course they did. They knew it as surely as they knew that the tide would touch the shore mid-afternoon and that another Naut ship would leave on its retreat, making its way back to the mainland. Too, it would bear an envelope embellished with Sir de Courcillon’s hand and the d’Orsay seal that, in some months, would reach her uncle. It would carry the news that his only son was dying.

Such thoughts did them no good. They certainly did nothing to take the bite out of Constantin’s sullen words.

How could fate - the Gods, the Enlightened, whatever the fuck might be out there – be so cruel? To give them a taste of real freedom, only to find that the apple they had been offered was poisoned and rotten. A fallacy. Teer Fradee was supposed to be their haven and their escape from their uncle and the constant, draining machinations of the court.

How perfectly unjust the powers that be were.

Why now? Now that they were settled and happy. What had they done so very wrong to earn the ire of their betters? And why her beloved cousin, who was the best and brightest of them all? He who had shone so very brightly, now barely simmering, growing colder by the day like some dying star.

Why not her in his stead?

“The only truth I know-” Ciel licked the salt from her lips, unsure as to when exactly her tears had slipped from between her shuttered lids, “- is that I _will_ find a cure. And when I do, I’m going to enjoy writing to uncle to tell him all about your heroic escape from death and how the city rejoices for their beloved Governor.”

Constantin only sighed, sinking deeper into their embrace, “Ah, my fair cousin, I do so wonder how our upbringing brought about such an abject optimist.”

“Watching you get back up every time uncle tried to keep you down has worked wonders for my outlook.”

Constantin snorted and his grip on her loosened. His mumble, spoken into her salt-soaked skin, was quiet enough that she nearly missed it, “He always did prefer you.”

Normally Constantin would have tried his best to hide the bitterness in the words. Poorly, perhaps, but he still would have tried. His exhaustion, his illness, or his weary soul…something prevented it now. It hurt as much as it did every other time but she didn’t let the guilt eat at her. Only too familiar, she ignored it now as she had every other time it cropped up.

“As I have always preferred you. Despite your _difficult_ personality.”

That earned her a barely-there chuckle, “And thank small mercies for that. No one else would have put up with me. Not like you anyway, sweet cousin.” Constantin finally pulled his face out of her collarbone to swipe at his cheeks with his sleeve. He looked awful, though she doubted she looked much better, with his puffy eyes. But none of that was as horrifying as the paleness of his skin which was white as snow and thin as parchment. He looked like he might crumble to pale dust if she so much as dared touch him. “It’ll be of some small comfort to me when I die that not everyone despised me.”

Another dry, acerbic chuckle. Another scrape at her marrow.

His quiet conviction was horrifying and left her glaring at him with no heat, “No one despises you, Constantin. You’re being ridiculous.”

He winced at her motherly tone and shrugged, “Facing death makes one feel rather introspective. I wouldn’t recommend it one bit, cousin. Especially without some wine on hand. I know that I have not always made myself an easy person to love. Not even for you. I’ve been cruel and vain and cold in turns to everyone.”

“The world did not deal you a kind hand.”

Her words might well have been water off a duck’s back. Constantin untangled himself from her fully and she watched, with a mixture of sadness and admiration, for the umpteenth time, as Constantin rebuilt himself from the ground up. The irreverence and airy levity he wore like armour was put back in place piece by piece until he was smiling like a fop, though there was little warmth behind his eyes.

“You aren’t? That is news to me,” and so, his walls, built on a foundation of neglect and abuse, were solid once more. The joke fell flat, however. Ciel, in no mood for it, fought back a sniffle and swallowed around an ever-tightening throat. She could do nothing but stare at him flatly when he offered her his best sheepish smile – the one that always got him out of trouble. “I do not doubt you would have dealt with my hand with signature grace.”

She just kept her sob stoppered but she couldn’t resist the urge to throw herself against him, to curl into his chest like she had done so many times in her girlhood. He held her gingerly as she croaked, “Only if I had you by my side. Are you not the star that guides me?”

And what would she do if he did die to the malichor? What purpose did she serve if she was not serving him?

“Well, you have another to guide you now,” Constantin’s chin jutted and jabbed the crown of her head. She frowned up at him only to have his gaze slide sideways off of hers. Sullen and avoidant, he ignored her beseeching look, “And I shall die without knowing true peace or happiness for mother and father shall long outlive me.”

“No. I won’t allow it,” Ciel gripped him by the chin, ignoring his splutters as she pulled his face around. She was fierce in her vehemence, practically shaking his head when she spoke, voice pitched low, “You and I? We will stand by your father’s grave and mourn him not at all.”

It sounded like a promise, an oath perhaps, but she knew that it may prove only to be the hope of a fool. But she had to be strong for him. For both of them. She needed Constantin to be motivated to fight the poison that now ran in his very veins lest he let it overtake him in his misery.

Because, in the end, she needed him as much as he needed her.

“Dance on it, more like, before we burn every portrait to cinders and smash every bust that dare bear his likeness,” Constantin snorted as he pried her fingers from his skin. She baulked at the dents she had left in her zeal, his burgeoning evening shadow scraping against the pads of her fingers when he continued. “What? No admonishments or scolding for crassness or morbidity?”

“Not today.”

“You must truly believe I’m dying to let me off so easily,” Ciel stiffened and pulled out of his loose grip completely. She wanted to scream. To sob. To clamp a hand across his merciless, tactless mouth and…what? Beg him to be silent? To stop trying to make light? Could he not see what this was doing to her? His next gauche mouthful, derisive and so very hurtful, left her cold, “Will you take my place as governor once it is all said and done? Do you think that’s what my father hoped for all along?”

His utter, tactless disdain for her feelings stole the breath from her. All she could do was numbly shake her head, shrink away from him and wrap her arms around herself.

When she could finally give voice to her thoughts, her words were as sharp and bitter as his, “I doubt uncle intended for some foreigner’s bastard child to be anything more than a disposable bodyguard to keep you safe.”

Regret for his hasty, Ill-thought out words washed over his face, turning his cherubic good looks into something painfully sorrowful. Something that lodged itself in her chest with no regard for its serrated edges. “Forgive me, cousin. I…”

“No matter. At best uncle wanted an island-grown bargaining chip, an in to the good graces of the natives or out of their bad ones,” it was a clinical assessment and one she had thought about often over the previous months. She had spent that time distancing herself from her uncle’s callus decisions, the lies – he would have no more of her. He already held the ‘what ifs’, all the potential routes her life might have taken in a closed fist. He wouldn’t have her dignity too. “Regardless of the reasoning, he used me. They all did.”

“I did not.”

“Then I shall be pleased to know that I was not the only one strung up by their ankle in their web of lies.” _Not the only one stupid enough not to see the truth. _

Constantin sighed and Ciel couldn’t help but take note of how it was weighed down by everything they were. Everything they were ever supposed to be. And that was a heavy expectation, indeed. Governors and legates; perfect examples of diplomacy, of competency- no, of the exceptional- of her uncle’s godsforsaken legacy.

“Half the world away and still we cannot escape their sly and dark orchestrations.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sure it’ll be of small comfort but, no matter the story of your origins, you will always be my…fair cousin,” he stumbled over the words with weary embarrassment, reaching between their bodies to tangle his fingers with hers.

Ciel couldn’t stay mad at him, she never could, “It relieves me to hear it. I do not know what I would do without you.”

“And here I was under the impression that it was I who needed you.”

“Can we not need each other?”

Constantin looked at her with sage amusement, though it was tinged with sadness, “Nothing in this world is so perfectly split or so perfectly in balance.”

Both of them twisted around when there was some commotion outside the door, the sound of shouting muffled by the wood. There was a bang as something slammed against a wall, followed by a sliding noise and pained groan.

Constantin turned to her with a raised brow, his mouth a moue of confusion, “Should we…?”

The doors to the throne room swung open and suddenly Kurt was bearing down on them.

The guard at his heels, palming at his head, was all but running to keep up with the determined captain. He was all of a kerfuffle as he stumbled along, a torrent of apologies spilling out of his panic-stricken face, “Forgive me, my lord, but he wouldn’t-”

“Of course he wouldn’t,” Constantin muttered at the same time as Kurt demanded, “Is it true?”

“Good news travels quickly, I see,” Constantin muttered dryly before climbing to his feet. Turning to the guard, he plastered on his signature grin. “It’s fine, man. Go back to your post.”

Bowing, he did as he was told.

“So?”

“You’re looking especially scruffy today, Captain. Rough night?” Constantin asked, reaching down to offer Ciel a hand up.

It was only then that Ciel noticed that Kurt himself was looking a little dishevelled. His hair was peeking out from under the brim of his hat and his gambeson was twisted partway around his torso like he had thrown it on in a hurry. Even his scabbard was skewwhiff.

Pulling Ciel to her feet, Constantin tucked her into his side.

“Is. It. True?” Kurt bit out, scanning Constantin’s wan visage. Probably searching for the first signs of illness.

Constantin considered Kurt for a moment before nodding, “It’s true.”

Kurt made a strangled noise in the back of his throat – something Ciel was sure he hadn’t meant to happen. Gods, he blanched and blinked and frowned as his face worked through a storm of emotions all at once. One moment he looked confused, the next he was furious until finally he was lost. Then he opened his mouth to speak…only to shut it once more when nothing came forth.

He looked at Constantin as though it were the first time he was truly seeing him. Or perhaps he only saw the future without him, grim as it would be.

Shaking his head, he tried to speak again.

Ciel ached to go to him, had even taken that first tentative step, but the cold fingers around hers tethered her firmly in place.

Finally, Kurt cleared his throat and offered them one last, slow blink before turning on his heel and fleeing in a controlled, staccato measure. The slam of the door behind him made both of them flinch though that was nothing in comparison to the thick silence it left in its wake. It was nigh thick enough to choke.

“I didn’t think he cared,” Constantin said a little too lightly before dropping her hand, “beyond me being his meal ticket, naturally.”

How callus her cousin could be. How free with his words.

“He’s not the cold-hearted mercenary he makes himself out to be and you’re not the unlovable rogue you think you are,” Ciel snapped before wincing and letting her eyes fall shut in a frown. Her next words were softer, an apology written in the silences between words. “He’s known us both for a long, long time. Of course, he cares about you. How could he not? He watched you grow up.”

“Perhaps,” Constantin said before he too frowned, “I find myself so very afraid, cousin.”

Ciel cast the door one last longing look before taking Constantin by the shoulders, grim determination written in the line of her mouth, “I will find a cure for this, I promise you.”

“Did you not say that very thing to your mother? We both know I’ll be dead before you can find one.”

Constantin fanned her niggling agitation to anger so swiftly that she snarled viciously, “Have you so little faith in me?” She asked, watching him take a quick step back from her. “Have I not already found more answers than anyone who has come before me? I will succeed, Constantin, whether you believe in me or not. Already we have promising leads, trails to follow. The answer _is _out there. I can feel it.”

Could he hear the tremor in her voice?

“As I can feel death. It comes on swift wings, cousin. Black as night and twice as cold,” he didn’t believe in her. After everything she had done…for their country, for their friends, for him…he had no faith to spare for her. “But still, you have not come here to console me in my tragedy. Haven’t you work to be doing?”

The anger left her and she slumped into herself, deflated before him, wrecked by his dismissive turn of phrase. Never, no matter the circumstances, had he shut her out before.

“Constantin…” Ciel reached for him only to wince when he stepped out of her reach with silent finality.

“Please, cousin. I will have no more of this,” he waved a hand at her before turning away, “I tire of the topic.”

“I’m going to find a cure whether you believe me or not,” Ciel shot at his retreating back but even she wasn’t sure she believed the words. Not at that moment. He didn’t acknowledge her. “Take care of yourself when I’m gone.”

“But of course. We wouldn’t want you to miss the funeral, would we?”

If there had been an object to hand, she might have lobbed it at his head in childish retaliation. As a relic of their bygone childhood.

Instead, Ciel ignored him and made for the door, trying to disregard the thoughts that nipped so mercilessly at her. Would it be the last time she ever saw him like this – healthy and wholly himself, mood swings aside? Soon enough the blackened veins would crawl across his lovely appearance, ruining everything in their wake. With every inch of flesh they gained would her heart seize with guilt, as the sand in some hourglass neither could see trickled away from them?

She was not so absorbed that she missed the looks that the staff sent her way as she made her way through the foyer, covertly or otherwise. Pity, of course, was the frontrunner, for Constantin was not a bad master. Sadness or worry too because a new governor often meant a shake-up of staff. None of that touched her…but the pleased, sly grins, badly hidden behind sleeves or hair? Those hurt more than she cared to admit.

Just another noble getting what they deserved, no? The malichor was, beyond its horrendous nature, an effective equaliser. It did not distinguish between sex, age, or, most importantly, class. The plush comforts of home or the rough-hew of the streets were nothing to the malaised, after all. No, nobles died just as pitifully as the lower classes. In just as much pain and suffering and just as often.

A guard opened the door for her with a bow, ushering her out into the rainy city beyond.

She only made it half-way down the stairs when her knees finally buckled and she crumpled onto one of the stairs with a dry, heaving sob. No tears followed that single cry, her chest left totally hollow.

She felt… numb. In a way that had nothing to do with the icy rain lashing her skin and clothes. Already she was soaked to her skin, her hair plastered to her face.

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

With unseeing eyes, only blinking whenever a droplet of water strayed too near, she stared out at the city beyond. What little she could make out of the grey vista, anyway. Little more than a dirty vignette, it was awash in muted shades of grey, blue, and muddy brown, hidden partly behind thick sheets of heavy rain. The downpour was an indifferent crescendo in her ears. It offered her no comfort or warmth, only the cold, wet embrace of insecurity.

Even the city sagged under the weight.

Ciel had no idea how long she sat there. The only measure of time was the violence of the shivers that wracked her muscles incessantly and even those went ignored. Sometimes people would pass, usually on their way out of the palace, but she ignored the looks of concern or pity. Other times they looked at her as though she were quite mad. Sometimes she felt that way.

It was some time before footsteps dared approach her but she knew the tread before she saw him, before he sat down next to her. Kurt’s hip pressed against hers. A simple weight and a powerful anchor, a reminder that she wasn’t afloat in chaos, adrift in the miasma that blanketed the city and her mind. She might have sobbed if she wasn’t so very empty.

The water which had been running over her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth – _everywhere_ – stopped when Kurt settled his hat atop her riotous head. Her mouth wouldn’t work to thank him.

Neither of them said anything for a long time. Instead, they sat in the pelting rain and let the world pass them by. Let the numbing cold settle deep into their bones. If it wasn’t for his shoulder, his hand, his hip she might have washed away with the flood that waterfalled down the glistening marble stairs. Washed away into the filthy street and unto the churning ocean beyond even them.

“All we’ve done to protect him and it’s come to this,” she said when she couldn’t stand the silence or watery deluge in her ears any longer.

Kurt leaned more heavily against her, neither of them tearing their eyes away from the city they called home, “Not even you can fight a disease, Green Blood.”

And didn’t that just fucking destroy her? And him if the hoarse voice and the rueful tone in it was anything to go by.

“No.”

They lapsed into another heavy silence and the rain seemed to answer. It should have been impossible for the torrent to grow any heavier, already it was barely possible to see a damned thing, but somehow it did.

Each drop was an icy bullet; a sharp sting as it bombarded their heads. She felt none of it.

Only when her shivers grew so violent that they rocked the man beside her with equal intensity did Kurt move to stand. Water poured off of him in a rush, slapping the marble beneath them. Pooling around their glistening boots.

“Come on. Let’s get you home before you catch your death,” Ciel ignored the hand that hovered in front of her eyes, palm skyward and catching rain. Sighing, Kurt crouched and curled a hand around her neck, touching his forehead to hers. They were both so cold that his touch still felt warm, “You’re no good to him ill…or dead.”

She finally met his gaze. The grey stage they found themselves on had washed out his normally tan skin to something sallow. Fat drops ran down his face but he paid them no attention as they raced over his lips and jaw or clung to his lashes.

Ciel swallowed around the knot in her chest.

“No, I suppose not,” she agreed, eyes sliding away once more. Still, she let him haul her to her feet and for a moment she rested against him, cheek pillowed on his shoulder. The slow and steady rise and fall of his chest, the pale heat, made her sigh.

Hands slid over her shoulders and down her back, the clothes he dragged past were left clinging desperately to her skin. Constricting. Choking. Ignored.

When his fingers finally laced through hers, he brought them to his mouth. The kiss he placed on her knuckles was a scalding brand, his breath feeling unbearably hot, “We’ll fix it. I promise.”

“I’m not sure either of us will be able to keep our promises. Not this time.”

He had nothing to say to that. Probably because it was the truth. They were setting out to do the impossible, after all. Neither the priests and healers of Thélème nor the scientists of The Bridge Alliance had cured the malichor, had even come close…and she was just a diplomat, he just a soldier.

She let Kurt lead her home.

There wasn’t a soul to be seen wandering the waterlogged streets. Not a bird to be heard, or the scent of the ocean. The city was washed out. Washed away. But they followed the streams of water that made rivers between the cobbles, the pale illuminations of the windows lining the alleyways, barely discernible through the thick mist.

When she couldn’t bring herself to do anything but stare at the house, her house, looking at it as though it were a stranger’s, Kurt opened the door and coaxed her inside.

The fire was already ablaze in the hearth, its heat licking over them both and leaving their skin over-sensitised and red-hot with cold. The air tasted of burning bricks and cast iron. Mrs Bisset was nowhere to be seen but signs of her were everywhere – the fire, a plate of food set aside, the smell of freshly washed laundry and steeping tea. It must have been later than she thought, the grey of the skies messing with her perception if her housekeeper had gone home already to see to her own family.

Looking at the puddles forming around them, mostly water but a little mud too, she thought of how displeased Mrs Bisset would be in the morning. She examined the thought with cold dispassion, her puffy eyes reflected at her in one of the growing pools.

She didn’t care. Couldn’t care.

Kurt muttered an unheard apology before heading upstairs and leaving her to her melancholic reflections.

She couldn’t bear to look at the ghost of herself. Bleary-eyed, she turned her attention instead to her home. _Her home, _since coming to Teer Fradee. How funny it was, how tragic, that the one space she had truly called her own now seemed nigh unrecognisable. Handcrafted to her tastes, decorated with bits and pieces she had acquired in her time on the island, with no expense spared…What good was that now? Her belongings seemed strange and pointless. A collection of tat that would serve no purpose in the afterlife. If there was such a thing.

Her eyes slid further along to the food set aside on the console table tucked by the stairs. Freshly cooked that day and waiting for her as always, it was covered in clean, white linen. It was a comfort of home that usually made her smile. Now it made her stomach twist.

The heat from the fire grew only more uncomfortable the longer she stood there but she welcomed the bite. She brought her fingers up and flexed them. Cold, wrinkled, and stiff, they had been ravaged by the cold. Ciel was so absorbed in the tight pain that she didn’t hear Kurt come back and put some towels next to the cold, stomach-turning food.

Her hand dropped back to her side as Kurt took her about the waist, turning her this way and that as he removed her jacket and waistcoat, the soaking ascot tied about her throat. He took his hat from her head and hung it by the fire before turning his attention to her boots. She let him work, staring unseeing past his shoulders.

His outer clothes followed, what little armour he wore stripped off and his sword set aside, water running down the blade like blood. It left him in nothing but a shirt and breeches, both of which clung to him like a second skin and highlighted his warrior’s physique.

Her libido, uncaring for her dying cousin, tried traitorously to flicker to life at the sight but she shoved the feeling aside. Kurt was either unconcerned or unaware of just how little he was leaving to her imagination as he reached for one of the towels, his muscles shifting systematically beneath the cloth.

The tenderness with which he patted her raw, damp skin shouldn’t have surprised her but it did. It was lovely, really, the way his scarred fighters’ hands roved over her. Pressing against her forehead, her cheeks and jaw with care. Chasing the droplets that skittered down her throat. So gentle. He looked down at her, handled her, with the utmost care. As though she were made of glass and might shatter to pieces at any moment.

He was no less gentle when he unravelled her thick braid and wrung out the ends, water falling fast and thick into the towel clasped in his fist. His face was full of concentration, brow pinched with how seriously he took the task of looking after her. When he scrubbed the linen over her scalp, leaving tangles and snarls behind, the towel draped itself between them, whirling around her in a dance of sedate, beige cloth. It was a momentary haven, a barrier between her and the world.

A barrier between her and Kurt too. Leaning forward, she trapped the towel between their bodies when she burrowed her face into his chest.

It dropped around her shoulders immediately and he folded her into his arms without hesitation. Gods, he was so cold. So scalding with it. And she was still shivering around each breath, her fingers tightening at her side.

When he pushed her back to pull the towel free, she shoved her riotous hair aside and looked at him.

His dark hair was still plastered to his head, raining drops down his cheeks and throat. Pinkened with the cold, his cheeks were full of affection. And his eyes…they were so warm, so very _something. _

Chest swelling with the beginnings of feeling, she tugged the towel from his grip.

Ciel was not shaped of glass and this would not shatter her. How could it with this man at her side? That gentle, giving man who handled her with such reverence. No, not glass to fragment and scatter with the tide but flesh flushed fully with life and all that entailed. Not much seemed familiar to her at that moment but she _knew _Kurt, recognised him with every fibre of her being.

Standing on her toes, she draped her arms about his shoulders. The world stopped spinning, slowing instead to a trickle. It let her have that moment; to savour his breath on her cheek, to cherish the warmth in his eyes. She wanted it to last forever – was determined to stretch it out as long as possible. And so, she kissed Kurt and delighted in every velvety brush of his chilled skin against her, each yielding movement as his mouth opened in surprise.

True to form, he didn’t stay surprised for long. Kurt gathered her close and the towel fell to the floor, pooling forgotten about their feet.

She poured everything she had into that kiss, gave him everything, and offered him more still. He could have it all. All of her. She ached to wrap herself around him, in him, as though he were her only anchor in the storm. She needed him. Wanted him. Unable to keep the need behind her teeth, she nipped at his plump lower lip and made a noise she didn’t recognise.

It was husky and wanton.

Gently, Kurt pulled away, keeping her in place with a firm hand to the hip.

“I love you,” she gasped against his lips, voice breathy as though in prayer, “I-”

“Ciel…” he groaned, voice so imploring. He struggled for a moment, stilled the fingers that were playing at the edge of his shirt, before trying to reason with her. “You’re not…this isn’t the time.”

He was wrong. So wrong. It was precisely the time. She needed him, craved the closeness that only he could offer.

When she determinedly snaked a hand around his neck and tugged his mouth back to hers, he came eagerly despite his words. He groaned and she swallowed the rumbles, pushing herself as close to him as she could get.

Rain. She could taste the rain on his tongue.

Reaching for the hem of his shirt, she pulled it free from his breeches and palmed the cool skin beneath. He was strong and smooth beneath her questing fingers and the soft hairs that trailed beneath his waistband tickled the heel of her hand. When his muscles leapt to meet her touch, she was unable to keep the prideful purr out of her throat.

It was cut short, however, when he tore his mouth away once more, “Ciel-”

She whined softly against his jaw before resting her temple against his chin. His breaths, uneven still, stirred the wisps at her hairline.

He was trying to reason with her, trying to do right by her, damn him. But he couldn’t keep the want out of his panting voice, or the covetous hands that were kneading the rise of her hips absently.

“I want to forget, Kurt. I want you to make me forget,” she whispered into his skin. When he shivered, she pulled back to watch conflict flicker in the depths of his eyes. “Just for a moment.”

As the silence between them stretched long and thin, Ciel ducked her head and reluctantly pulled her hands from his skin. His rejection coloured her cheeks and throbbed painfully in her chest. Would he leave now, driven out by her desire? Did she want that?

She didn’t have to think about it for long. Muttering something too low to catch, the world pitched and Kurt hefted her into his arms. Confused and relieved, Ciel barely had a moment to appreciate this new closeness before she was settled before the fireplace and Kurt disappeared upstairs without so much as a word.

Flopping back onto the rug, Ciel rubbed at a temple.

He returned a moment later with a blanket in hand and a determined look on his face that set her stomach fluttering. It was how he looked before a fight, eyes dark and dangerous. Jaw set and sharp. Pulling up short at her feet with a piercing inhale, he dragged his burning gaze over the lounging length of her. He seemed to pause for a long moment on the slim, pale expanse of midriff that was exposed by her position before swallowing. It was loud enough that she could hear it easily.

Fire snaked through her belly, pooling deep between her thighs.

When she tried to relieve the ache by rubbing her thighs together, his eyes snapped up to her and her breath stuck in her throat.

Lids half shut, his pupils were blown out with desire. Blackness had swallowed up the usual ice of his gaze and replaced it with something molten, something that promised her _exactly_ what she wanted.

The throb in her centre answered only too eagerly.

When the weight of his stare became too much and made her want to squirm, she gestured at the blanket.

He immediately snapped out of it, though his eyes remained searing, and spoke, “Regardless of what happens tonight, I can’t have you freezing to death.”

His voice seemed to have dropped an octave and was suddenly made of smoke and honey.

Despite that she couldn’t help but smile at the words, her soft laugh a little choked in her surprise. What might have spoiled the moment seemed only to make it better. Her reaction made him soften and smile back at her. Gods, his smile. It didn’t happen often but it changed the entire look of his face, the scar in his lip almost disappearing entirely. If anything, the rarity only made her love him more. She cherished each one, holding them deep in her heart.

Sitting up, she beckoned him down to her with a sigh and ran a thumb over his stubbed cheek, “What would I do without you?”

Kurt didn’t answer save to kiss her once more. It was a hesitant thing, all butterfly wings and satin as it gave her one last chance to change her mind. Wrapping her arms around him, she pulled him down to the floor.

Slowly, painstakingly, and with gentle sweeps of his tongue, Kurt coaxed her lips open for a deeper connection. At the same time, his hands charmed her thighs open to receive his big, muscular frame. He spread her out under him with ease, but even when he settled into the cradle of her hips, he kept an inch of space between them. 

Palms itching with greed, Ciel ran her hands over his back with abandon, mapping out the smooth valley of his spine, the twin dips at the base of it. She committed each imperfection to memory, stroked over every scar. When she reached his shoulder blades his shirt snagged her wrists fast, pulled taut around his middle. Whining against his mouth, she tugged at his shirt and he chuckled against her mouth. The sound trilled behind her hipbones and he left her just long enough to tug the shirt over his head.

Sculpted by years of weapons training, Kurt was all tan skin, corded muscle, and lethal grace. But she only had a moment for admiration before his body was covering hers once more. He managed to hover over her with just a forearm, his other hand sliding into her hair so that he could tug her head back.

Soft sighs and mewls fell from her open mouth as he explored the skin of her throat. He branded her skin with searing, open-mouthed kisses, tentative nips, and soothing licks. Ciel practically went limp when he sucked on the delicate skin between neck and shoulder, head lolling as she panted.

Her skin was on fire, pulled tight over her muscles in heavy anticipation. With each brush of Kurt’s delectable mouth, the feeling only grew slicker and tauter.

Pushing herself up onto a shaking elbow, she drew him close and grazed a kiss over his lips, his cheek and worked her way over to his ear. When he tried to chase her mouth, she sucked on his lobe in retaliation and dragged a moan from deep in his chest. Wet heat ran thick through her veins when his fingers grasped the edge of her shirt.

Kurt pulled it up over her head, twisting it tightly in a fist when it reached her elbows. Arms trapped above her head, he mouthed over the swell of her breasts, still clad in her soaked chemise.

Ciel was pulled tighter than a bowstring, chest heaving like she’d just fought a Nadaig. She needed _something_. Desperately. Something to release the tension wracking her entire form. Wrapping a calf around his hip, she pulled sharply down.

Head cracking against the floor, Ciel whimpered and Kurt hissed at the now insistent press of his hardness against her centre. Rocking against him strummed her good and left her keening in a throaty voice that she would have sworn would never have come from her. It soothed and inflamed her all in the same motion, each spark threatening to catch and set her alight.

She wanted him so much it hurt. The ache between her sawing legs was insistent and demanding. The want in her chest was deeper still. Her body was begging him for attention, for _more. _When his mouth finally, _finally_¸ closed over the hardened peak of her nipple, Ciel cried out. In triumph. In abandon. The greedy pulls of his mouth, the sinful, supple press of his tongue as it laved her pebbled, straining skin through silk had her writhing underneath him.

When Kurt let go of her shirt to play with her other nipple it was a relief in and of itself. Her hands were all over him, carding through his hair, scratching at his shoulders and biceps when his mouth did something _delicious_. They were everywhere, anywhere – twitching and lacking focus.

No wonder so many women had risked ruin for this. His touch felt better than she could have imagined, than she had imagined when her hands had slid between the shadowed sheets at night.

She had no idea when he’d done it but somehow, he had wriggled the chemise down her arms so that it pooled around her waist. When his mouth closed over her bare flesh, she sang for him.

He worked her until she was a trembling, mewling mess. His mouth smirking against her dewy skin, she tugged against the strands of hair tangled around her clawed fingers. Capturing his mouth anew, she kissed him until she was dizzy with him. There was nothing languid or gentle about it. It was all teeth and tongue. He conquered her easily, swallowing her whimpers and sighs like he was ravenous as he rocked mercilessly against her.

When her fingers tugged sloppily at the ties of his breeches, his hand seized her wrist, trapping it between their bodies. With one last bruising nip for her lips, he pulled away.

Firelight threw half of his face into deep shadows but she could see the naked want there. It couldn’t fully be hidden behind the smug curl at one corner of his mouth.

“Please,” she begged, voice cracking as she flexed the wrist he held fast.

Kurt pushed her hand aside, pressing her fingers into the furs beneath her. The command was silent but undeniable. ‘Stay put’, it said. The soft ulg fur scraped at the sensitized skin of her fingers, shoulders and back. It was terrible and wonderful. It was nothing in comparison to Kurt’s warming, rain-scented skin against hers.

Without a word he went back to the trail he had left broken at her sternum, stopping to press a chaste kiss to the skin directly over her heart. Then he continued downward. Drawing in a sharp breath, Ciel shivered. Gooseflesh trailed behind his mouth and every kiss, lick, and nibble spun the tension at the base of her spine tighter. He bowed her back, pulling her taut when he sucked the rise of her hip hard enough that it would bruise.

Fingers hooking in the waistband of her trousers and smallclothes, Kurt leisurely peeled them down her thighs. His mouth chased the edge, following in its wake and loving every inch of skin that was revealed. When he sat back on his knees to pull them fully from her, Ciel found that he also called the breath from her throat and stole her ability to think. The fire caressed him and the shadows played over the broad line of his shoulders. It highlighted every rise and dip of his muscles, especially the deep V-shape that disappeared beneath his trousers.

She had to tear her eyes away from him, her thighs rubbing harder together. It did nothing to ease her. She felt so delicate under his gaze, so utterly feminine. Yet, she also felt powerful. His attention was wholly hers, his regard filled with desire so sharp it looked like pain on his face.

Her whimper was cut short when he set a hand to the inside of her thigh. Her flesh, so hot and pliant, quivered under his fingers. But he didn’t move, save to take his place atop her once more.

He was giving her another out, she realised.

Fingers stroking the strong line of his jaw, she said, “I want you.”

Kurt’s kiss was tender at first like he was whispering words of love silently against her lips. But like a conductor he plied the instrument of her body artfully, building to a phenom of a crescendo with each glide of his hand closer to the shadow between her thighs. Her mouth turned muddy, distracted by the gentle swirls of his fingertips.

Gods, her own touch had never felt like that, not even on the heel of the most salacious of thoughts. Her hand had lacked the size and calluses that now felt so, so good against her.

In perfect unity they shuddered, her wetness coating his fingers for the first time. He faltered only a moment before he seemed to melt into himself, his big shoulders relaxing with each exploratory stroke.

When he circled the slick pearl at the top of her sex, her thighs fell open and her head knocked against the floor. Ciel’s mouth worked over a silent cry, a quiver flaring to life in her hips. When his finger teased her opening, slipping barely inside, she left angry crescents in his skin. And when he finally he made good on that tease, her hips rolled to meet him without thought, body driven by millennia of primal, animal instinct.

The pace he set was slow, a slick glide that opened her up. Ciel’s eyes fluttered shut, fingers twisting in the rug. When she was moaning lowly in her throat, her hips moving perfectly with his in an ancient dance, he added another finger and crooked them just so. Her eyes flew open and the moans caught in her stuttering chest.

With each purposeful slide of his fingers against something that felt incredible, _indescribable, _everything in her body coiled. She was so lost to the feeling that she didn’t notice he’d moved until the unmistakable touch of his tongue joined the fray.

Ciel might have sobbed for how good he felt, how good he was making her feel, but she simply couldn’t find the breath. It was wound up in her muscles, in the tightening of her thighs and hips. His hair was wet silk between her grasping fingers. His stubble a delicious scrape against her thighs. And his mouth – oh, his _mouth_\- hot velvet and satin by turns, sweet-talked her ever higher until she was certain she would snap bone.

With a clever twist of his wrist, she shattered into stardust.

She was distantly, warmly, aware that she was chanting his name on the crest of each wave of pleasure. Her thighs were trembling and clasped tightly to his shoulders, her hips pinned by a large palm. Kurt stayed with her, worked her through that shuddering, devastating orgasm until it had left her quaking and boneless on the floor.

He placed one last kiss on her thigh before climbing back up her still spasming body, where its twin was pressed to her dewy temple. Ciel tried to murmur some nonsense that might have been his name and he chuckled, wrapping his arm around her and drawing her into his chest.

Only capable of breathing against his collarbone, she basked in his attention. He smoothed her hair with a palm, the fingers of his other hands ghosting over her side in long, absent strokes. Every so often he would press a firm kiss to her forehead, her browbone or cheek.

Sighing, she shifted closer, only to fall still when her thigh brushed up against him. He was still hard, still straining hot against his trousers. If he felt her, he didn’t react, but she could feel him throbbing through the cloth. Despite her own recent release, her stomach swooped at the evidence of his desire. Wriggling a hand between them, she reached for his ties once more.

Kurt stiffened, hands falling still, “Ciel…”

Hesitantly, she ghosted her fingers over the rise of his flesh. When he didn’t stop her, she cupped the heavy weight of him in her hand. Gods, he was burning. So hot and weighty. Kurt choked back a curse as she palmed him.

“You… don't have to. This isn’t about me…” he cursed properly this time and she could feel the flex of his jaw against her head.

“You’re right,” Ciel agreed, fingers clumsy as she pulled at the ties. Every time her knuckled brushed his flesh, he hissed quietly into her hair. “It’s about _us. _I’m not interested in this being one-sided, Kurt.”

Ciel purred when the pads of her fingers finally met flesh.

He was softer than she expected – smooth, warm skin over an iron rod. When her wrist caught on the edge of his trousers, she slipped him free and explored him without restriction.

If Kurt had a reply, he choked on it and chose to bury his face in her shoulder instead.

Inexperience coloured her touch, her curiosity guiding her. She stroked along his shaft, listening to the changes in his breathing. She palmed the twin weights below. Too, she glided over the silken, rosy head, thumbed the thick vein on his underside and wondered idly how his pliant, heated flesh would taste.

Kurt’s hand wrapped around hers before that last thought could gain a true foothold. He lifted his head, eyes all glass as they searched hers, “I’m not going to last. It’s been-”

She cut him off with a chaste kiss, speaking against his lips, “Doesn’t matter. Just show me how to make you feel good.”

He groaned, head bobbing shakily as he began to move.

Kurt showed her just how he liked to be touched, tightening her grip and moving in long, lazy strokes until her fingers were slick with his excitement. He pressed her thumb to a spot just below his head on each upstroke, his fingers twitching against her. They kept it up until he was panting and could no longer guide her well.

His hand fell away and he rasped, “Faster.”

Always an apt pupil, she followed that instruction to the letter. Her hands caressed his throbbing flesh, making sure to hit that sensitive spot every chance she got.

Kurt shuddered and bit his lip when he came, muffling the low moan she felt in his chest. Slackening both pace and grip, she pumped him slowly, watching as his skin moved and his seed painted her fist and stomach. Only letting go when he’d softened, she nuzzled back into his chest. It slowed beneath her cheek with each breath until it was back to its usual lulling rhythm.

Her eyes were heavy by the time he extracted himself to go look for a cloth, and she was nearly asleep when he’d finished cleaning her. Voice bleary, she asked, “Will you stay?”

Slipping his hands under her knees and shoulders, he lifted her into his arms, “Of course, I will.”

Ciel was asleep before his foot touched the bottom step.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This feels like this took forever to get to but finally, Ciel got a little bit of action. It was meant to be chapter 3/4 in my original 'plan' but it felt too soon without all those filler chapters. But I guess that meant some extra Kurt/Desardet goodness. 
> 
> Apologies for this mammoth read, I couldn't really find an organic spot to split it in two that I was happy with. 
> 
> Only a few more chapters to go, I think. Nearly there!
> 
> I'd also like to thank everyone who left kudos or comments. I can't even begin to describe how encouraging they are. They are the lifeblood that kept this going. You're all awesome.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a non-con kiss featured in this chapter - not sure if its needed but I'm giving the warning just in case.

_“Is this the last time I’ll see you?” _

Ciel tried not to think of the words or the broken look on Kurt’s face as he had uttered them into the ashen space between their desperate, clinging lips. Couldn’t think of it, wouldn’t. She swiped at her mouth with the back of a glove like she could wipe the memory away. As if such a thing was even possible.

But there was no choice, _she _had no choice; she had to keep going, for all of them. If that meant it would the last time then so be it. She’d take the moment to her grave, held closely to her chest.

Even filled with that grim, fatalistic determination, the ascent to sanctuary only grew harder with every deliberate step. Her mouth drew in the mountain air, its vile stench and the stain of ash, and felt it sink its fingers into her lungs. It was the stink of death and offal, of blood and leaking bowels. It wasn’t new to her as she wasn’t new to the battlefield. It was never pleasant, of course, death so rarely was, but this time it felt much, much worse. That smell, the sights and sounds of fallen comrades was never something she wanted to associate with Constantin… he was a creature of luxury and comfort; he was meant for palaces, for court politics, and leadership. The kind of leadership that led from a throne…not from the battlefield.

This was her place, in his stead. She was his protector, his closest advisor, and confidante. She was the voice that spoke for him, the hand that delivered his justice. And when the need arose, she was his executioner.

Yet, for all those terrible moments, the metaphorical headman’s axe had never felt this heavy.

Blood rushed hot in her ears, pounding in tandem with her shaking head or with the heavy strikes of her heels in the dirt. Her chest heaved but at no point did it ever feel like she was getting enough oxygen. Gulping down the air only left her with a dirty, charcoal taste in her mouth. Still it felt like she stood on the knife’s edge, merely a step away from spiralling into a panic attack that felt too much like madness.

The mountain shuddered down to its very core, growling like a wolf that had been backed into a corner and was fighting for its very life. Ciel stumbled forward, flinging an arm out to the side. It was only the presence of an old shrub limb, gnarled and thorny that kept her on her feet. Its ‘help’, however, was not offered without blood price. The study, fibrous remnants of desiccation sliced through the centre of her palm but she barely felt it. Only when she flexed her fingers could she sense the sting, buried under everything else and easily hidden by the blood that welled from deep within her flesh.

An eerie howl, thin as mountain air, interrupted her glassy stare and the basic, almost mechanical, movement of her fingers. As Ciel lifted her head, the earth rumbled again. She drew in a breath and was surprised to find a note of crispness on her tongue, of sweet, fresh air. It almost made her laugh, it certainly made her climb to her feet. If the land could still fight, then at least they had a chance.

The shadow that crawled over her head signalled her passage into the heart of En on mil Frichtimen’s sanctuary. It was a sign of the end, of the curtain closing on their stage of war. And this, this was to be their amphitheatre.

Ciel’s heart skipped painfully in her chest at the familiar sight of Constantin; the set of his shoulders, the long legs and shiny boots, and the once-comforting, Congregation blue of his coat. Yet there was nothing comforting about the way he was crouching at the edge of the shelf that overlooked the circular valley. Like a raptor on high, curled in on himself as though he were a predator assured of an easy kill. The relics of pillars, the carcasses of ritual circles, lay littered around him like old bones. But their guardians, those who had given their lives to protect the land between those very stones, were nowhere to be seen.

Yet.

The hand Constantin was pushing into earth left no argument as to why he was here. He was here to bond once more and assert his hold on Teer Fradee.

He must have heard her boots hit the ground as she dropped off the ledge into the sanctuary proper, because he turned to look at her over his shoulder. All familiarity fled in light of the movement. This man she barely recognised. The features, the aristocratic slope of his nose and cheek, were Constantin but the rest…She didn’t know the lupine bow of his frame, or the branches that sprouted from his head in a twisted crown of antlers, nor the blackened veins. Even his curls, once golden and cherubic, were dull and muddy. So much of him seemed blasphemous and cruel, a selfish shadow that remained behind to taunt her.

It made her heartsore to look at him but more than that it frightened her. _He _frightened her.

The expression on his face, the intensity in those white eyes was enough to make her shudder. Never had his wrath, whether it had been the tantrums of a child or the rage of a man full-grown and three sheets to the wind, had ever touched her. But this? _That _look? It burned her, cut her to the very core of herself. There was such anger in the eerie, pale glow that had replaced the sky-blue of old. It was searing, even at a distance, and suddenly she was a mouse caught in the shadow of a hawk.

But she was no mouse, to shrink and perish without a fight. She never had been. Especially not with him.

A grin split his inky mouth as he caught sight of her face and she knew he recognised the fight in her, the challenge, and relished it. There was no sheepishness, no apology as there would have been before.

_“Its strength has driven him mad.” _

“It’s not him,” she muttered to herself, watching as the smirk was quickly patched over with apology, like he’d suddenly remembered himself, “not anymore.”

She was but a few strides away from him when he stood and turned to face her. And when a growl, pitched low enough that felt it vibrate in the soles of her feet, came from the shadows to her left. Whipping around, Ciel found herself face to face with the guardian of the sanctuary as it crawled towards her on all fours. Its shoulders rolled slowly under its ‘skin’, eyes darting to and from Constantin. Stalking and feral. A guardian that had apparently found a new master.

Just how close was Constantin to total control? Close, if the way the creature deferred to him with bowed head was any indication.

“Good of you to join me, cousin,” Constantin said easily, the warning look he threw the guardian morphing into a smile that might have been described as charming were it not for the wreckage of his face. “So unusual that I get you alone.”

He gestured to the valley like it was a nicely decorated study and he was inviting her to sit for tea. Ciel wanted to sob, to scream at him that was because their friends were risking their lives to hold the line against his rabid pets, driven mad by his bid for power.

As if he knew her thoughts, he waved a hand and looked at the guardian, “Restrain her.”

A massive hand wrapped around her torso before she could move, tight enough that her elbows dug painfully into her ribs and waist. She kicked and fought against the iron grip, but no amount of wriggling was going to get her loose.

“Damn it, Constantin,” Ciel hissed his name like a curse, spitting furiously as she struggled and tried not to think about the moist, wood-smoke breath on the back of her neck. “Why? Why are you doing this?

She hated how desperate she sounded, how futile her squirming was. But she _was _desperate. There had to be a way to get through to him, to bring him back to himself. But he just stared at her, the barest hint of a smile ghosting over this mouth.

Slumping forward so violently that her hat hit the dirt and unable to look at him, she said, “After everything we’re been through? How could y-”

Boots came into view but she dodged his attempt to make her look at him. When he realised it was no good, he switched tactics. His voice was silky smooth and right next to her ear, no different than the one he used on the latest serving girl to catch his fancy.

“But for you. For us! So that we may live free at last.”

That made her strain upwards, finally looking at his flat, _uncompromising _face with bared teeth. “I never, _never _asked for any of this.”

She would have screamed at him if she could have unlocked her jaw, would have scratched and bitten if she could, she was so incensed. People were dying! She would never have wished for it. Not for all the freedom the world over. Not for her. Not even for him.

“Look at how everything around us burns and falls to ruin. It’s madness.”

Constantin arched a brow and followed her erratic, side swinging gaze. Not even for a single moment did the uninterested cant of his face flicker or move. There was no empathy to be found, and just as little humanity. Unmoved and unimpressed was he by the once great sanctuary of a God, a sight that would have drawn breath on the dreariest of days.

“Oh, cousin. Don’t you see?” He chided her gently as though she were a child, taking her by the chin and holding her fast. Whatever he was looking for in her face, he obviously didn’t find because he sighed. “No, of course you don’t.”

When she didn’t fight him, he released her, fingers curling to cup her cheek so that they might stroke a sombre line across her freckles. It was almost regretful, the touch. It made her skin burn uncomfortably and pull tight, as though it might shrink into her and away from him.

“You do not understand because you’re still committed to this, dying world. To your _worldly attachments.” _

The way he rolled the words around in his mouth left no illusions as to his distaste of her affliction.

“They are your attachments too. Or have you forgotten that along with your sense?”

Constantin scoffed and pulled her up onto her tiptoes by the root of her braid, so close that their noses brushed, “This world you cherish so? It is old, decaying. To survive it has used, betrayed, and manipulated us! It would not have hesitated to kill us. Is that the world you would protect?”

“Yes. For the people we love and who love us. Who love you, Constantin!”

“How naïve you are.”

“I cannot, will not, blame the world for doing the same. It protects itself and its people, its way of life.”

“Its way of life demands my death, cousin. Would you so readily hand it over?” He demanded in the lowest register she had ever heard him use, pulling her higher on her toes. The only thing stabilising her way his grip, painful though it was. He made himself her anchor, forced her to lean on him.

She couldn’t answer that, she could only blink and gawp. He softened at her stricken look – for who could ask such a despicable question, and better yet, who could answer it without pause? Ciel had no illusions that this was anything more than a knife covered in velvet; deceiving and very much still a threat.

“Oh, my sweet, naïve, cousin,” he cooed, breath fanning over her jaw in anything but a comfort. “I have seen death and understood the vanity of it all. My father’s ruses just so he could earn more power…the political bowing and scraping to preserve corrupted nations.”

She almost laughed in his face, acrid and hysterical. Instead, her lids slipped closed as she shook her head. Once again everything came back to the Prince d’Orsay. Ciel had hoped that, if nothing else, that them coming to Teer Fradee would allow Constantin to finally step out from his father’s frigid shadow. The thumb on her cheek forced her to lift her lashes and she found herself staring into those ghostly eyes. It struck her then that it was not his father’s shadow that was the problem. It was his own or, more specifically, the one he’d constructed for himself, thinking it was his father’s doing.

For the first time she realised that Constantin would never be able to break free of those chains, to step into the sun. Tears, unbidden and angry, welled in her eyes. How could she not have seen it sooner? When she could have helped him. How could -Constantin noticed her tears, because of course he did, and hand his thumb along her lower lash line, catching a bead and holding it to the light. He looked at it as though it fascinated him, puzzled him, and she wondered at just how inhuman he seemed.

She had to bite back a hiss as her stomach twisted in on itself, roiling in distaste and fear.

With a sigh of what sounded too much like pleasure, Constantin rubbed the droplet back into her skin and laid his forehead against hers. His voice, though low and quiet, seemed to swell in the air they shared, “I have been offered unrivalled powered allowing me to be rid of this. Think, my sweet cousin! With it I have the means to send the old world, corrupt and rotten as it is, to its inevitable death and to build something new here…something unique.”

“Don’t do this, please. You can still stop this, Constantin, and come home with me.”

He shook his head, not believing her. And he was right to. Ciel wasn’t even sure she believed her words. How could they ever go back from the things he’d done, the people he’d killed? Still, she couldn’t help but _want. _She wanted those lazy days in the sun, talking over matters of state. She wanted the evenings drinking brandy in front of the fire and making fun of his father. She wanted her cousin back. Her best friend.

But it wasn’t possible.

“Only in the new world can be together. And this new world, Cousin? Sweet, lovely Ciel. It is my gift to you.” His fingers slid into her hair again, anchoring her by the nape as he slid his cheek along hers, whispering his poisoned words into her ear.

Her mouthed pleas, her assurances that she wanted none of this went unheeded. Unheard. Lost in the faded and dirty fabric covering his shoulder and collarbone. His cheek felt rougher as he pulled back, eyes oddly hypnotic as they looked into the depths of her soul, tattered as it felt. Exposed and raw were the only words she could use to describe how she felt under that heavy-lidded gaze, like each small movement of his eyes were rubbing an open, bleeding wound. It was the gaze of a predator waiting for the right moment to strike, when the life and fight was all but gone.

Nothing would have prepared her for the truth of the attack.

Constantin, still grasping her by the nape, slid the other hand over her shoulder to play with the corner of her collar, “You and I? We can its new gods; its immortal and benevolent monarchs.”

With that declaration he pulled her towards him by the collar and slid his mouth over hers, swallowing her broken, shallow sound of protest.

He kissed her, _devoured_ her, like he was utterly intent in taking her apart, working her down to almost nothing. Every insistent movement designed to strip away layers until there was nothing left but the open, vulnerable core of her. If she felt raw before it was nothing compared to this assault on her senses. His grip was possessive, his mouth and teeth rough and scraping. Her breath was thin and pleading in his mouth and Constantin just filed it away with the rest of the pieces he’d forced her to shed.

This wasn’t Constantin, couldn’t be. She simply wouldn’t believe it. Constantin loved her, truly loved her. Now she saw the signs – the looks, the mood swings – that perhaps that love was not wholly platonic. But even so, he’d always put those feeling aside. Put her first despite the harm to himself. This, however? This wasn’t love. It was a parody of passion, a lesson in cruelty. This was punishment.

She knew passion now and she knew love at the hands of a man. Sweet, gentle Kurt who had held her in her worst moments, who had loved her through them and still wanted her at the end. Who waited for her even now-

“Let me give you this gift,” Constantin begged against her lips, her cheeks and jaw, his mouth never leaving her skin long enough to even properly form the words.

None of this was a gift. It was chaos and death, held in the hands of Constantin’s madness. His words were a ribbon that held it all together, silken but tattered. Fraying despite the lies that coated his tongue. It would never be a gift. Nothing good would grow from this tainted ground, supposed benevolence of his Godhood aside.

There was a swift jerk at her collar, her ascot and top clasps failing under his hand. His fingers were cold as they sought her breastbone, stroking the skin over her heart.

It was wrong. The fingers were wrong, the hand they belonged to. There was no warmth, no familiar calluses. She wanted Kurt, wanted to be buried in his arms, his scent and comfort. He was the only one she had shared her body with, the only one who had ever held her heart. There would be no other, not now or ever, for her.

When Constantin moved to kiss her once more, palm flat on her sternum, Ciel sunk her teeth into his bottom lip with such ferocity that she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to remove the stain from her teeth and tongue. It tasted vile, all dirt and decay. It tasted like poison. The only thing that stopped her from spitting at his feet was the knowledge that she was not a child of the continent. The taint in her mouth and throat would not touch her, just as it had failed to when Asili had tried.

Constantin reared back with a sputter, fingers pressed to his mouth, blood running black over the curve of his hand. He looked at it, surprise giving way to rage. When he glared at her she knew he was considering striking her, she could see it in his eyes and the way his body was coiled like a snake. He easily could have, she was retrained and incapable of fighting back. Coolly, she looked back at him.

It was almost a dare, the way she looked at him. Goading him to hammer that last nail into the coffin.

He deflated somewhat, instead, and spat out her vitriol. It coated the ground. Black as ink, a symptom of the disease. When she looked at him, she was unsure which he was anymore.

“He himself is the incarnation of the old world he is speaking of. He has its vices and its poison.”

The wizened voice of En on mil Frichtimen spoke with the lungs of Teer Fradee still. They valley breathed with him, the tree at his centre rumbling and shaking with the power of the disembodied words. They seemed to come from everywhere all at once to settle inside her head and enforce her own thoughts.

Vice, temptation, and indulgence. Constantin knew all of them well, as intimately as one could and still remain afloat. Here was the son of a prince; a boy, and then a man, who had danced of the edge of all societies, moving between class and creed with ease. With the assurances that all doors could be opened with enough gold or charm or leverage. He had enjoyed the vices of the low-born just as readily as he had indulged in the finest of everything else. The only thing that had ever been withheld from him had been love - true, parental love. She knew he ached with it, wanted it so very desperately.

Ciel had tried to be that for him, to be a font of nonconditional, familial affection. She had tried to smooth the jagged edges but she knew now that it had never been enough. She had never been enough. Once he had realised that, Constantin had quickly tried to fill the whole left by that neglect with women, drugs or drink.

“_His hunger had no limit.”_

Of course, it didn’t. It never had.

Suddenly, she wasn’t sure that he’d every truly been afloat.

Constantin snorted, as petulant and dismissive as a child who thinks they know everything there is to know about everything. Without thought he drew his hand across his cheek, leaving a dark streak in his wake.

The hand holding her loosened somewhat, just enough that she could breathe more comfortably, when Frichtimen spoke once more, “For his own immortality he is willing to destroy everything around him, to break millennia of cycles! I implore you, flesh of my land, to think of all the lives that will come to an end to feed his pride.”

“Cousin,” Constantin said, so soft and low and reasonable that it was impossible not to look at him. “Don’t listen to this old god. He’s just like all the others after all. Clinging to life.”

Were it not for the ‘pathetic’ he tacked on at the end, his judicious façade may have withstood an ounce of scrutiny. As it was, his pettiness and venom shone through.

When En on mil Frichtimen next spoke, Constantin whipped around to argue with him. Ciel ignored the exchange and focused on the guardian that was still holding her. It was obvious it was struggling, its great head swinging back and forth, back and forth. Between Constantin and Frichtimen, she quickly realised. With every flex of its shoulders, its fingers followed and loosened for a moment.

It wasn’t enough that she could break away cleanly but it might be enough to get her hands where she needed them. Focusing on keeping her breathing shallow, her twisted her wrist till it was painful.

And then she waited.

When the valley shuddered, the branches of the tree vibrating in wrath, she struck.

Palm facing the guardian’s torso, Ciel took hold of its foreign muscles and locked them place. It was as though they turned to stone, unyielding and unmoving. Like a beautiful, deadly statue. She had no time to breathe, to gloat, she had only a moment before the stasis broke. Wiggling furiously, sliding down its palm and through its fingers, she almost wept to find herself ass to dirt.

If she hadn’t been throwing herself bodily at Constantin, she would have heard the muscles creak behind her.

She tackled him to the ground with a shoulder to his middle, with a rough grunt that barely scratched the surface of her fury and frustration. A knee to her hip threw off her aim, her knuckles barely brushing his jaw and robbing her off the satisfaction of punching him properly.

“Cousin,” he grunted, trying to grab for her wrists and struggling breathlessly to appease her with_ that fucking voice. _“Please.”

“Shut up,” she snarled in return when he rolled them over.

“Cou-”

The sound of her forehead cracking against his chin as she headbutted him was glorious. “I said shut up.”

Their grappling took them to the edge of the ravine, close enough that her braid overhung the drop off. The danger distracted her enough that Constantin, who felt stronger than she remembered him every being, managed to get a hold of both of her wrists and hold them up and away from both their bodies.

It would only take one knee to knock them both over into the ravine. One move to end the game.

“You’re going to get us both killed,” Constantin snarled, chest already settling back into normalcy now that he had her pinned. With some wriggling, he ripped her rapier free from her hip and tossed it over the edge.

“Is that what you want? Do you desire my death?”

A piercing shriek ripped through the sanctuary and both their heads whipped around. It was so loud. Surely even the others, scattered in camps down the entire length of the mountain, had heard the rage.

Ciel and Constantin watched as the guardian tore each of its muscles free from stasis, working from the head down until the claws on its feet could tear at the earth.

“Truly? Your death is one of the last things I want.”

His eyes lit up and for a moment she almost felt guilty. But then she sunk her knee into his crotch and watched those eyes bug half-way out of his head. She shoved him off of her and rolled to her feet, leaving him clutching his unmentionables in the dirt.

“Restrain her,” he croaked to his beast, “but do not harm her, not for anything in the world.”

“Touching,” she muttered to herself before tugging off her gloves with her teeth and dropping them at her feet.

Palm to ground, the guardian stalked towards her, slow and deliberate and reminiscent of a big cat she had seen in one of the Continent’s menageries. She turned in time with it circling, never willing to have it at her back but only too aware that showing it to Constantin might be even worse.

It chuffed a series of low huffs that sounded disconcertingly like a chuckle.

The fight was short and dirty. Ciel did more dodging that any actual fighting, waiting for the guardian to leap at her to move away and use her magic to attack its eyes or limbs. She’d managed to blind it on one side entirely, leaving a smoking crater behind, when she got cocky. Just as she had been paying attention to its patterns and movements, it had been studying hers. It anticipated her movements and knocked her to the floor.

She cursed herself for forgetting the first rule of fighting a Nadaig; inhuman in form, perhaps, but human in intelligence and deduction. This wasn’t an animal to be baited and led.

The foot that came down on her chest, the creature looming over her with a satisfied purr, was as thick and immovable as a damned tree. Scratching at it did nothing, as did sinking her switchblade deep into what should have been its ankle. It lay her flat out as it applied pleasure, squeezing the breath from her chest till she was wheezing.

Her lungs burned and her vision swam in and out of focus, blackening at the edges.

Ciel groped for her switchblade, driving it home once again to no avail. It wasn’t till she was sure she had one or two good breaths left that she became aware of the anatomy around her knife, so animal despite its plant like appearance.

Her last breath came and went and with it she channelled all of her magic into its body, shoving with as much force as she had left. A raw, molten river flowed through her palm into its petrified flesh. Stronger and hotter than she could have ever hoped for. What was meant to heal in any other circumstance ate through the guardian’s innerworkings like wildfire, razing everything to the ground.

Everything in her head was heavy and black, cracking against the ground, but she swore she heard screeching and smelled fire.

“Stop!” Constantin cried, something - fingers, maybe? - sliding under her head.

The relief of her first full breath was searing, sweet. Painful too. She turned on her side and coughed into the dirt.

Fingers stroked over her head in an apology she didn’t want or need. Barely believed.

“I do not desire your death. I’m sorry.”

“You could have fooled me,” she spat back, trying to get her elbow and knees under her somehow. It was difficult. She was wobbly and dizzy, like she hadn’t eaten for days. When he moved to help steady her, she slapped him away.

She couldn’t accept that kindness. Not now that she knew the cost of it.

She tried, truly she did.

The noise of distress, born deep in his throat, shouldn’t have affected her but it did – like a punch straight to her sternum. For a moment he looked so like himself; young and utterly unsure. It was enough that she grabbed for his hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet.

“Forgive me,” he said again, letting her go but staying close.

There did seem to be genuine remorse in his countenance, so much so that she squeezed his hand. More out of habit than anything else. It was those decades of learned behaviours that allowed him to snag her fingers and lace them through his, holding her fast. When he brought it to his face to place a chaste kiss on her knuckles, she thought she’d drown under the intangible wash of guilt that washed over her.

Shame quickly followed and then a thousand other emotions, each as fickle and overwhelming.

She tried to focus but all she could see was how pale her skin was in comparison to his, how unblemished next to that terrible bloom of blackened blood across his cheek.

Next, he brought her fist to rest on his chest, over his heart. The throb below her fingers was slow, too slow really, but steady. He was calm despite everything, despite the fact that his guard dog has nearly just killed her. His face told one story, corroborated by his mouth.

Only to be exposed by his heart.

The back and forthing between them, the emotions he was dredging up from somewhere deep within her…it was dizzying and horrifying. She wondered if she’d been pistol whipped in a fight and this was all a bad dream.

Better to wake up with whiplash and a headache for the history books than to wake up to the alternative – to wake up dead having killed your best friend.

Just who was this creature? Who so cruelly wore her cousin’s face and plucked on the heartstrings that had belonged to him. Not Constantin, surely, even with all his flaws. But the more she looked at him the more she realised it had to be – the tilt of his jaw when he was angry, the slant of his brow, or the quirk of his lips when he was amused. It was him, only all of his worst habits, his terrible flaws had been drawn to the forefront to smother the thoughtfulness, the goodness that he had.

Maybe it was still in there. Maybe she could reason with him…

The fingers around hers seemed to tighten in warning, as if he knew her thoughts, tight enough that the bones of her knuckles felt like they were grinding together. His voice, however, when he spoke was all silken promise. “We could have eternity, cousin. Just the two of us. Without care or distraction, without our family and ties to hold us back. Think of all we could achieve. We could make the world our own. We could make it better.”

It was a good promise, persuasive. There was much they could do for this world; no pain or suffering, no poverty or sadness. Everyone could be equal, free to live as they wished. But the truth was less promising. Without rules there would be anarchy, which would only lead to a different brand of suffering. And equality? Constantin had already anointed himself a god; a king amongst the peons. There would be no quality. There would be no paradise.

There would only be more of this.

The slice in her hand throbbed as he pressed a knife into her hands, forcing her fingers to wrap around it.

He cupped her face again and for a moment she feared he would try to force another kiss on her. To her short-lived relief he refrained, only bringing their foreheads together once more. “All you have to do is bind yourself, here, with me. And we will be gods. Together, forever.”

Temptation rushed through her, just as she was sure he intended. But it wasn’t him that made her weak to the offer. That was all on her.

She could be bound to him once more. Truly, this time. By blood and intent, she could reforge the fraudulent bond she had nurtured all her life. She could be his and he hers.

Her fingers turned white around the grip of the knife and a lump formed in her throat, lashes fluttering to lay flat on the curve of her cheek. It wouldn’t be the same. He wouldn’t be her Constantin, nor she his fair cousin. That bond was gone; not with the truth of her heritage but with the truth of him, the landscape of devastation, of fire and blood, in which they stood. He would have allowed their friends to die for his immortality, for his monopoly of her. But she wouldn’t.

She made a promise after all.

_“Is this the last time I’ll see you?”_

_“Be it in this life or the next, Kurt, we will see each other again. Even if I have to wait a lifetime.”_

_“No waiting. Come back to me, Green Blood.”_

_“I promise.” _

“Come…” Constantin whispered to her, forcing her lashes up once more. He shook her none too gently in his fervour. “Be with _me.”_

She couldn’t help but lick her lips, hating the way his eyes followed the movement like a predatory cat. Just waiting for the right moment to pounce. 

She had to end this madness. There was no other choice. She _would _protect them all.

It was her who struck, who dealt him a fatal blow.

Both of them cried out as Ciel drove the dragger up between his ribs but only he jerked and wheezed. Tears ran fast and hot over her cheeks, and she cupped his cheek, mourning the man he had been before all of this.

“Forgive me,” she whispered throatily, knowing there would be no forgiveness for this. Not from him. Never from herself. “This is not a road I can follow you down. Not this time.”

“What a shame,” he said, too airy to be a lament. His hand curled over hers, forcing her to pull the dagger free. Ciel couldn’t look at the blood that ran over their hands; hers pale, his mottled. But she did look him in the eyes.

She owed him that, owed him her gaze and her thoughts in that moment. Not the monster but the man, the friend she had lost months ago.

Only now could she begin to mourn him.

When he collapsed to his knees, she followed and wrapped her arms around him. He ignored her or, more likely, he couldn’t hear her repeating apologies or the way that she sobbed his name in a hoarse and hurting prayer. Gone was the light in his eyes before she had even guided his body to the floor, his heart deathly still beneath her cheek.

Ciel sobbed into Constantin’s dead, unmoving chest until it was soaked, until she thought that she would die too from the grief. Only, when the tears stopped coming, she was still alive and raw and wrecked.

She was too gone, exhausted and heartbroken, to hear the words of En on mil Frichtimen when he spoke to her. “Sleep, flesh of my land. The scarred one comes for you.”


	10. Chapter 10

Kurt lowered himself until he was balancing on the balls of his feet and his eyes were level with the sombre writing that marked the stone’s stoic face.

It didn’t matter how many times he looked at it…it always made the air feel stale, stagnant and cloying as it sat in his lungs like a pile of musket balls. With gloves fingers he followed the sharp edges, the clean lines of the chisel marks. He let the name form in his mind, the image of the young man it belonged to quick to follow.

It was still hard; to think of him, to think of how they had failed him. How he had failed them too. 

Head dropping into his chest, Kurt leaned into the headstone when he could no longer bear to look at it. He wasn’t so macho that he couldn’t admit to the tears that welled in his eyes or the lump that formed in his throat. He also couldn’t lie about still feeling like he’d failed in his duty, despite what anyone else said.

And he knew he wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

How many times had they come here, together and separately, to seek forgiveness in the year gone by? A handful? Dozens, even. However many, sometimes it still didn’t feel like enough. But most of the time it did. Only in the last month or two had the stranglehold of guilt begun to ease to something resembling manageable.

He lifted his head and read the words once more: Here lies Governor Constantin d’Orsay, beloved cousin and friend. He lives on in our hearts, never to truly be gone.

It was short and bittersweet, better suited to a minor noble than a Governor and son of a Prince. But that’s what Ciel had wanted for him, had fought for him to have. When Kurt had asked her about it, delicately and after nights of watching her torture and second guess herself, she had said Constantin deserved freedom despite his transgressions. He deserved to finally leave behind his chains, the weights of the titles and responsibilities that he had been born to and told he would never handle with grace. He deserved to rest.

She was right, of course. The bureaucrats would have given him less that nothing, the would have carved every insignificant title onto that stone, all the usual empty platitudes and epitaphs, including the name of his parents. Gods’ knew that the Prince and his wife did not deserve the honour. Nothing the Continent could have given him would ever have been enough.

Not to say that they hadn’t tried. Angry letters and diplomats had come in on every ship for the first few months, demanding that Constantin’s remains be returned to the Continent and interred in the family crypt. Ciel had refused every time and Kurt had threatened to bodily throw a few of them into the harbour when they’d been difficult about it. But despite the Prince’s escalating threats, Ciel had stood strong. At one point, in her early fits of rage about it, she’d considered going entirely rogue and cutting herself and Teer Fradee off from the Continent entirely. Only the thought of being a ruler - because who else but the hero of Teer Fradee would be suitable? – deterred her. Too tired, too cynical, she said.

After about 6 months the letters had begun to slow and then they stopped entirely. Ciel’s fears that her uncle would show up unannounced went unfounded – finally allowing their charge, their friend his well-deserved rest. That hadn’t stopped them from appointing her acting Governor, of course. Kurt guessed that the Prince was punishing her, forcing her to sit in the seat of the man she had failed to protect.

It was easier to see, however, on days where the guilt was a little quieter that they hadn’t failed. How can you prevent someone from contracting disease? How could they have possibly known, fresh off the boat as they were, about Asili’s plan? If intelligence had failed, then it was before they could have done anything about it. And the things that had come after? Compassion and love had guided her actions but as soon as she had the whole truth, the whole story, she had done what needed to be done.

She hadn’t failed Constantin, not in life and certainly not in death.

The sea-breeze ruffled Kurt’s shirt, as though it were trying to bring him back to the moment.

Constantin was buried on a little-known hillock that ran between forest and sea, not too far outside New Serene. Only a handful of people knew where Ciel had chosen for his final resting place and fewer still knew what she had gone through to make that happen. Before she had been appointed acting Governor, Ciel had gone back to the sanctuary – alone, despite Kurt’s grumbling – to seek En on mil Frichtimen’s guidance.

Kurt had been surprised when she had returned with a promise of help for the mainland and a birch sapling in hand. What he hadn’t known was that she had gone to sanctuary to ask for permission to return Constantin to the earth – specifically, to Teer Fradee’s earth.

The sapling had been Frichtimen’s blessing and now stood sentinel over the graveside. It was a weedy thing still but it had already grown a great deal in the months since it was planted. More so than it would have normally, Kurt thought, but maybe that was just Teer Fradee’s magic. Either way, it would guard the site long after Kurt had been returned to the earth himself.

Coughing and clearing his throat, he thought over the past months. The past year, really. A whole, unbelievable year that seemed to drag in one breath and already be over the next. It had been a time of change and chaos and learning for them all. Vasco had been made admiral and shipped back out to his beloved sea; Síora was leading her people at her sister’s side; and Aphra was doing…whatever Aphra did, something about plants and culture. With Ciel at the head of their nation, relations with the natives and the other nations were flourishing. Their people were thriving.

Of course, it hadn’t been without its _trying _moments. The initial fallout had been…unpleasant. The infighting and politicking had been enough that Kurt been tempted to convince Ciel to run away with him and leave it all behind. To where, exactly? Who knew. But it had only ever been a nice thought. It was clear that their loyalties would never have allowed it; she needed to corral her wayward and troublemaking nobles and he needed to rebuild the Coin Guard’s reputation.

But…it would have been nice. Truly, breathtakingly nice. To take her away and not have to worry about anything but them and what to hunt for their next meal.

Regardless of their decisions and ties, they had continued to find solace in each other. Only in the sanctity of their bed, in darkness and his arms, did they voice their fears and concerns. Their hopes and dreams for the future. She eased him, just as he tried his best to ease her. That she even allowed him to made him swell with pride.

And finally, all of that extra burden was coming to an end.

Dawn tomorrow would mark the first day of their freedom. Some snotty git by the name de Marcel would be taking over the role of governor after months and months of training. Kurt had no idea what he and Ciel would do when that handover occurred but he knew he’d follow her anywhere.

“I wasn’t sure you’d be out here today,” a soft voice spoke from behind him, sounding almost as if it had come in on the sea breeze, “You were gone when I woke.”

Kurt only nodded, hardly trusting his voice, and tilted his head to allow Ciel a better angle as she ran her fingers through his hair, along the shell of his ear – something he’d been surprised to learn soothed him better than just about anything else. He leaned more heavily against her, his shoulder to her hip. The familiar comfort of her, the one they had perfected in the last year, leeched into the marrow of his bones until there was little tension left.

The respectful silence between them gave way to the symphony of nature and once more he was struck by just how perfect the spot she had choose was. He could hear the hush of the waves against the cliffside, the rustle of autumn leaves and the songbirds that called to one another.

After taking a moment just to breathe together, to let the landscape soothe their still aching hearts, Ciel lowered herself down to his level. Dozens of thin layers of tissue paper, white and pale blue swirling in on one another, crinkled and folded against her torso. Kurt cleared away the debris left behind by similar offerings and Ciel set the flowers in the vase, arranging them to her liking before sitting back on her heels. It was just as they had done every month since his death.

The tree at the headstone’s back swayed towards them, its young leaves glancing the top of Ciel’s bowed head when she ran her hands over the letters.

Knees protesting, Kurt stood first and she followed, lacing her fingers with his. Shoulder to bicep, her forehead on his shoulder.

“What are you doing all the way out here on your own anyway?”

He couldn’t help but chuckle softly at the way she rubbed her cheek against the rough spun material of his shirt and it eased the immediate, sucker punched reaction of his gut at the question. Ciel peeked up at him from under her lashes, a small smile playing about her mouth. It was still sad given where they were, but it was sincere and warm. He knew it was meant just for him.

“I, uh-” he cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders, suddenly feeling hot behind the ears in spite of the damned wind. It took a couple of seconds before he could try again. “I came to pay my respects…and to ask for a blessing. “

He rubbed a thumb over the ridges of her knuckles, hoping to distract her from how low, husky and unsure he sounded. He hadn’t even said anything yet and he was already- already-

“A blessing?”

Now or never, right?

Clearing his throat _again_, Kurt turned fully to face her, taking up her other hand and holding both flat over his heart. Curiosity coloured her lovely features, her delicate brows pulled into a thoughtful, and dare he say hopeful, furrow. Gods, she was so, so lovely. Just – just – incredible. So unerringly good and giving and wonderful. The things she had done, the peoples she had brought together. It sometimes beggared belief and he had lived it at her side. This was a woman who had saved the world at terrible cost and asked for almost nothing in return. She had saved him too, even if he hadn’t realised it at the time. Saved him from himself, from the darkness he had fostered for far too long.

Kurt knew that that there would be no other for him – even if she decided he wasn’t what he wanted anymore. This was it. She was the only one he desired, the only one who could bring him to his knees but never felt the need to. He wanted her, wanted the strong and nigh unshakable legate, the proud and compassionate noble, but mostly he wanted the woman beneath it all.

“I already sent a letter ahead with Vasco to ask for you uncle’s blessing to seek your hand,” he said a little too quickly, aware that she could feel how furiously his heart was beating. “We should expect his refusal any day now.”

Her chuckle was a tad watery sounding and he could see that realisation was fully taking rook, blooming as red roses on her cheeks.

“I came to ask the one person who mattered,” Kurt said, bringing her fingers up to brush a kiss across the tips, her knuckles, and her palm. Ciel’s lashes fluttered though it barely dispelled the tears that shone so brightly in her eyes. “Do you think he’d approve?”

“Approve of what, Captain?” she laughed again, husky and brimming with joy. “You haven’t asked me anything yet.”

Perhaps he was overly earnest but Kurt quickly dropped to one knee, looked up at her, this woman that had him through and through, and let the love overtake him. All the thoughts of flowery prose, of lovesick and heartfelt sentiments that had been circling in his head for months deserted him, left him high and dry.

Even so, words came tumbling out of his month.

“Ciel, my sweet Excellency. You are everything I want and everything that I love. Be my wife?”

He had no idea where the words came for but they hadn’t been what he was aiming for. He hadn’t meant for it to come out so plainly, so bloody gravely, but it did. And from the look on her face it was perfect.

The man he was a year ago would have berated himself and compared the moments to others she might have had with frillier men. No longer. She loved him, had loved him for so long – far longer and far better than he deserved. And he’d spend the rest of his life making it worth her while and loving her back just a fiercely.

It was _perfect. _

“Nothing would make me happier,” she said on a choked sob, throwing herself at him and bowling them over into the grass and halfway down the hill with a kiss that tasted wholly of joy. Over and over she muttered ‘I love you’ against his lips and he answered in kind.

Soon enough they were lying in the grass, tangled up in each other. Every time she looked up at him from her place on his chest, she bit her lip to try and contain her smile. Like she thought she was dreaming or crazy. Like he was too good to be true. And every time he kissed her until he was satisfied that she believed it.

They stayed like that until the sun began to fall, till the murkiness of twilight surrounded them in a murkiness that seemed darker than true darkness. It was a world of their own, to do with what they would. A future.

Kurt dropped a kiss on her forehead before cricking his neck to look up the hill. He couldn’t see the headstone but he could just about make out the very outer tips of some of the tree’s branches.

“I think he would approve, you know,” Ciel said, pressing a chaste kiss to his Adam’s apple before pushing up to an elbow. “He probably would have asked what took you so long.”

That he would have, probably before asking Kurt if he was properly informed about his husbandly duties. Definitely would have offered Kurt some books on the subject, too. Reaching up, Kurt grazed her cheek as he plucked a stray piece of long grass from her half-loosed braid. He smiled at the sight of its seeds, knowing there was no way to remove them all.

“I think so too.”

She smiled at him before shivering, huddling closer for a breath. “Let’s go home.”

Kurt pulled her to her feet, tucking away a stray strand of her hair. “Give me a minute?”

“Of course,” she stood on tiptoe to press a quick kiss to his mouth before turning and making her way back to New Serene. Not without throwing one last, radiant smile over her shoulder, of course.

Warm and loose with contentment he made his way back up the hill and just took a moment. To reflect, to think about what he wanted to say.

“I hope you _would_ approve,” he started, reaching for his wrist. “I know you loved her as much as I did, kid. I promise I’ll do whatever it takes to make her happy. For the rest of our lives.”

He undid the leather tie and pulled it free, noting that the mark it had left in his skin would take some time to fade. But even so he didn’t need it anymore. Soon he would have another band to take its place, and a promise of forever.

The memory of its return shimmered in his mind.

_Fishing it out of the pocket he hadn’t seen in months, Kurt had rubbed the leather strip between his fingers, feeling like he fisted a trophy made or gold or silver. Just as it had alwyas been; worn and warm, well-loved and rich outside those white spots that had been coaxed into life by his questing fingers. _

_“I had wondered about this,” Ciel had murmured, running a finger over the faded, trailing edge of the band._

_He was surprised that she didn’t recognise it for what it was even if she didn’t realise it was hers. But, then, she probably had handfuls of the things. _

_“I would have given you your coat back and this too but…” she continued, hand falling into her lap as she turned to look out of the window. Kurt run a thumb over the neat curve of her jaw and could feel that she was gritting her teeth. The tension leeched out as his fingers wandered down her jaw to her chin. She let him turn her face back to his and spoke once more. “By the time Mrs Bisset had finished repairing the damage you and I were in a better place. I didn’t want to ruin that again.” _

_“It’s yours.” _

_“What?”_

_Kurt had brushed the hair back from her face and gathered it in one hand, loosely tying the band back in place with the other. It was sloppy, but it held well enough. “It fell out of your hair that day in the training yard.” _

_She reached up to touch it and his fingers slid around her wrist. “And you kept it?”_

_He laughed at the incredulous lilt in her voice before leaning forward to place a kiss in the corner of her mouth, only for her to turn and pull him into a deeper kiss that left them both breathless. When he pulled away, he said, “I thought it would be all I’d ever have of you.” _

_Her sad look as the words sank in quickly turned impish as she said, “And here I thought Vasco was our resident romantic.” _

_Wincing, Kurt had let go of her wrist. “Please don’t talk about the sailor when I’m naked.” _

_“Oh, that’s right. You are naked.” When she kissed him again, he could feel the smile curving her mouth, the laugh simmering in her throat and answered in kind, pulling her close. _

_They had made love in a stripe of sunlight, the hothouse scent of high summer and skin in their lungs; adoration and love on their lips and on their fingertips. Sated and boneless, she had fished the throng from her hair and tied it back about his wrist._

_“I like how it looks on you,” she said, a tad triumphant. A lot satisfied. _

Kurt saw now that it had been a proposal of her own, promise of the future even then. He shook his head with a fond smile, thinking about how she was always one step ahead of him. Of them all.

“She was never just mine, I know that too,” Kurt said, looping the leather hair tie around the root of a branch and tying it tight. It was worn and faded but still strong. It had lasted through everything else, why not this too? He knew, deep in his bones sure, that it would survive long enough that the growing tree would swallow it up – that it would be become a part of its very fabric.

The tree, the gravesite, and Constantin would have a part of her forever. Kurt only hoped that it was offering enough to tide Constantin over until they were all together again.

Running a hand over the grave one last time, he murmured, “Wait for us, yeah?”

With another moment given to memories of Constantin, Kurt had to jog to catch up with Ciel before she reached the walls, her smile brighter than all the city lights combined. He knew there was no better a beacon to guide him home.

There was no need for ‘what if’s’ anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well folks, looks like we finally made it to the end. Thank you to all who took the time to read, review or leave Kudos. It's been a pleasure.


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